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Student Spotlight | Biological Engineering, Usu College Of Engineering

College of Engineering News

July 2016 - Q&A with Biological Engineering student Harsh Singh

Biology Student Goes ‘Fishing’ In Antarctica, Tin Can To The Rescue, Ohio University College Of Arts & Sciences

All Forum Articles

No abstract provided.

A Face Versus Non-Face Context Influences Amygdala Responses To Masked Fearful Eye Whites, M. Justin Kim, Kimberly M. Solomon, Maital Neta, F. Caroline Davis, Jonathan A. Oler, Emily C. Mazzulla, Paul J. Whalen

Dartmouth Scholarship

The structure of the mask stimulus is crucial in backward masking studies and we recently demonstrated such an effect when masking faces. Specifically, we showed that activity of the amygdala is increased to fearful facial expressions masked with neutral faces and decreased to fearful expressions masked with a pattern mask—but critically both masked conditions discriminated fearful expressions from happy expressions. Given this finding, we sought to test whether masked fearful eye whites would produce a similar profile of amygdala response in a face vs non-face context. During functional magnetic resonance imaging scanning sessions, 30 participants viewed fearful or happy eye …

Addressing The Needs Of Classical Biological Control Programs, Invasive Species Advisory Committee

National Invasive Species Council

Conclusions

Classical biological control has been among the most cost- effective and environmentally safe management tools for invasive species for many years, both nationally and internationally. Addressing the political, regulatory, and institutional challenges in the discovery, pre-release phase and post-release monitoring of a classical biological control program would greatly enhance the long-term potential for success. From this white paper, a number of recommendations were developed that we believe will significantly improve prioritization and effectiveness of classical biological control programs, including:

1. Develop transparent criteria to prioritize those invasive species for which classical biological control is the most cost-effective control option. …

How Can Text-­Based Debates Increase Empathy In Upper Elementary Students, Melissa M. Ogden

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Theses and Dissertations

The research question addressed in this project was, how can text­based debates increase empathy in upper elementary students? It explores research around critical literacy, social­emotional learning, and debates with a specific focus on alternative perspectives and empathy development. The researcher combines research around different forms of debate, argumentation and collaborative reasoning, to create a text­based debate protocol. The action research studies the impact on students’ empathy development for characters found in read aloud texts through participation in weekly text­based debates and written reflections. Students debated two opposing perspectives regarding a character’s personality and wrote reflections in which they explained both …

Reed V. Reed Respondent's Brief Dckt. 44056

Idaho Supreme Court Records & Briefs, All

No abstract provided.

Vision Based Brain-Computer Interface Systems For Performing Activities Of Daily Living, Indika P. Pathirage, Redwan Alqasemi, Rajiv Dubey, Karan Khokar, Elijah A. Klay

USF Patents

In one embodiment, assisting a user in performing an action in relation to an object of interest includes capturing an image of an environment, identifying boundaries of objects within the image, adaptively dividing the image into selectable cells so that edges of the cells generally aligning with boundaries of objects within the image, and detecting selection of one of the cells by the user, the cell encompassing at least part of the object of interest upon which the user wishes an action to be performed.

Anomalous Fluctuations In The Orientation And Velocity Of Swarming Bacteria, Shawn D. Ryan, Gil Ariel, Avraham Be’Er

Mathematics and Statistics Faculty Publications

Simultaneous acquisition of phase-contrast light microscopy and fluorescently labeled bacteria, moving within a dense swarm, reveals the intricate interactions between cells and the collective flow around them. By comparing wild-type and immotile cells embedded in a dense wild-type swarm, the effect of the active thrust generated by the flagella can be singled out. It is shown that while the distribution of angles among cell velocity, cell orientation, and the local flow around it is Gaussian-like for immotile bacteria, wild-type cells exhibit anomalous non-Gaussian deviations and are able to move in trajectories perpendicular to the collective flow. Thus, cells can maneuver …

Research Integrity And Compliance Changes Guard, Edwin Smith

University of Mississippi News

As Tom Lombardo retires, Gene Hines becomes new director

Hepatitis C Virus Frameshift/Alternate Reading Frame Protein Suppresses Interferon Responses Mediated By Pattern Recognition Receptor Retinoic-Acid-Inducible Gene-I, Seung Bum Park, Scott Seronello, Wasima Mayer, David M. Ojcius

All Dugoni School of Dentistry Faculty Articles

Hepatitis C virus (HCV) actively evades host interferon (IFN) responses but the mechanisms of how it does so are not completely understood. In this study, we present evidence for an HCV factor that contributes to the suppression of retinoic-acid-inducible gene-I (RIG-I)-mediated IFN induction. Expression of frameshift/alternate reading frame protein (F/ARFP) from HCV -2/+1 frame in Huh7 hepatoma cells suppressed type I IFN responses stimulated by HCV RNA pathogen-associated molecular pattern (PAMP) and poly(IC). The suppression occurred independently of other HCV factors; and activation of interferon stimulated genes, TNFα, IFN-λ1, and IFN-λ2/3 was likewise suppressed by HCV F/ARFP. Point mutations in …

Conserved Expression Of Vertebrate Microvillar Gene Homologs In Choanocytes Of Freshwater Sponges, Jesús F. Peña, Alexandre Alié, Daniel J. Richter, Lingyu Wang, Noriko Funayama, Scott A. Nichols

Biological Sciences: Faculty Scholarship

Background

The microvillus is a versatile organelle that serves important functions in disparate animal cell types. However, from a molecular perspective, the microvillus has been well studied in only a few, predominantly vertebrate, contexts. Little is known about how differences in microvillar structure contribute to differences in function, and how these differences evolved. We sequenced the transcriptome of the freshwater sponge, Ephydatia muelleri, and examined the expression of vertebrate microvillar gene homologs in choanocytes—the only microvilli-bearing cell type present in sponges. Sponges offer a distant phylogenetic comparison with vertebrates, and choanocytes are central to discussions about early animal evolution …

Sex Chromosome-Wide Transcriptional Suppression And Compensatory Cis-Regulatory Evolution Mediate Gene Expression In The Drosophila Male Germline, Emily L. Landeen, Christina A. Muirhead, Lori Wright, Colin D. Meiklejohn, Daven C. Presgraves

School of Biological Sciences: Faculty Publications

The evolution of heteromorphic sex chromosomes has repeatedly resulted in the evolution of sex chromosome-specific forms of regulation, including sex chromosome dosage compensation in the soma and meiotic sex chromosome inactivation in the germline. In the male germline of Drosophila melanogaster, a novel but poorly understood form of sex chromosome-specific transcriptional regulation occurs that is distinct from canonical sex chromosome dosage compensation or meiotic inactivation. Previous work shows that expression of reporter genes driven by testis-specific promoters is considerably lower—approximately 3-fold or more—for transgenes inserted into X chromosome versus autosome locations. Here we characterize this transcriptional suppression of X-linked …

Footprints Reveal Direct Evidence Of Group Behavior And Locomotion In Homo Erectus, K. G. Hatala, N T. Roach, K R. Ostrofsky, R. E. Wunderlich, H. L. Dingwall, Brian Villmoare, D. J. Green, J. W.K. Harris, D. R. Braun, B. G. Richmond

Anthropology Faculty Research

Bipedalism is a defining feature of the human lineage. Despite evidence that walking on two feet dates back 6-7 Ma, reconstructing hominin gait evolution is complicated by a sparse fossil record and challenges in inferring biomechanical patterns from isolated and fragmentary bones. Similarly, patterns of social behavior that distinguish modern humans from other living primates likely played significant roles in our evolution, but it is exceedingly difficult to understand the social behaviors of fossil hominins directly from fossil data. Footprints preserve direct records of gait biomechanics and behavior but they have been rare in the early human fossil record. Here …

Emerging Environmental Justice Issues In Nuclear Power And Radioactive Contamination, Dean Kyne, Bob Bolin

Sociology Faculty Publications

Nuclear hazards, linked to both U.S. weapons programs and civilian nuclear power, pose substantial environment justice issues. Nuclear power plant (NPP) reactors produce low-level ionizing radiation, high level nuclear waste, and are subject to catastrophic contamination events. Justice concerns include plant locations and the large potentially exposed populations, as well as issues in siting, nuclear safety, and barriers to public participation. Other justice issues relate to extensive contamination in the U.S. nuclear weapons complex, and the mining and processing industries that have supported it. To approach the topic, first we discuss distributional justice issues of NPP sites in the U.S. …

Pheromone Lure And Trap Color Affects Bycatch In Agricultural Landscapes Of Utah, Lori R. Spears, Chris Looney, Harold Ikerd, Jonathan B. Koch, Terry L. Griswold, James P. Strange, Ricardo A. Ramirez

Biology Faculty Publications

Aerial traps, using combinations of color and attractive lures, are a critical tool for detecting and managing insect pest populations. Yet, despite improvements in trap efficacy, collection of nontarget species (“bycatch”) plagues many insect pest surveys. Bycatch can influence survey effectiveness by reducing the available space for target species and increasing trap screening time, especially in areas where thousands of insects are captured as bycatch in a given season. Additionally, bycatch may negatively impact local nontarget insect populations, including beneficial predators and pollinators. Here, we tested the effect of pheromone lures on bycatch rates of Coccinellidae (Coleoptera), Apoidea (Hymenoptera), and …

The Genetic Landscape Of Dural Marginal Zone Lymphomas, Karthik A. Ganapathi, Vaidehi Jobanputra, Fabio Iwamoto, Pallavi Khattar, Elaine S. Jaffe, Mahesh M. Mansukhani, Govind Bhagat

NYMC Faculty Publications

The dura is a rare site of involvement by marginal zone lymphoma (MZL) and the biology of dural MZL is not well understood. We performed genome-wide DNA copy number and targeted mutational analysis of 14 dural MZL to determine the genetic landscape of this entity. Monoallelic and biallelic inactivation of TNFAIP3 by mutation (n=5) or loss (n=1) was observed in 6/9 (67%) dural MZL exhibiting plasmacytic differentiation, including 3 IgG4+ cases. In contrast, activating NOTCH2 mutations were detected in 4/5 (80%) dural MZL displaying variable monocytoid morphology. Inactivating TBL1XR1 mutations were identified in all NOTCH2 mutated cases. Recurrent mutations in …

Analysing The Error Potential Of Administrative Data In Determining The Sinuosity Of Small Rivers, Pierre Karrasch, Sebastian Hunger

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

According to the European Water Framework Directive the member states are committed to prove the good ecological status of all water bodies. These requirements are verified by a regular monitoring. Especially the use of remote sensing data and methods of applied geoinformatics and statistics can be recommended for the monitoring of several hydromorphological parameters. At the same time for some single parameters basic geodata provided by local authorities are available (e.g. river centrelines). In this study the quality of these basic geodata is compared with self-extracted results using different remote sensing data sources (CIR-orthophoto, digital terrain model). The results reveal …

Effects Of Climate Data Aggregation On Regional Net Primary Production (Npp) Modelling, Matthias Kuhnert, Jagadeesh Yeluripati, Pete Smith, Holger Hoffmann, Marcel Van Oijen, Julie Constantin, Elsa Coucheney, Rene Dechow, Henrik Eckersten, Thomas Gaiser, Balász Grosz, Edwin Haas, Kurt-Christian Kersebaum, Ralf Kiese, Steffen Klatt, Elisabet Lewan, Claas Nendel, Helene Raynal, Carmen Sosa, Xenia Specka, Edmar Teixeira, Enli Wang, Lutz Weihermüller, Gang Zhao, Zhigan Zhao, Stephen Ogle, Frank Ewert

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

In ecosystem modelling studies, data are often collected at a small scale but are used in models to predict ecosystem responses e.g. net primary production (NPP) at coarser scale, using data aggregation. The data aggregation causes errors that are difficult to predict, because of model complexity and our limited knowledge of the spatial heterogeneity underlying our aggregated input values. Input aggregation thus adds to the uncertainty associated with model predictions. One way of reducing uncertainty related to input aggregation error is to evaluate models at different resolutions for areas where high-resolution input data are available. The objective of this study …

Modelling Potential Nitrogen Losses In Oil Palm Plantations With In-Palm, An Agri-Environmental Indicator, Pardon Lénaïc, Bockstaller Christian, Marichal Raphaël, Sionita Ribka, Nelson Paul, Gabrielle Benoît, Jean-Paul Laclau, Caliman Jean-Pierre, Bessou Cécile

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Oil palm cultivation area is expected to increase until at least 2050. This expansion raises environmental concerns, not only regarding land-use change and its consequences, but also concerning potential impacts of losses of nitrogen such as ammonia volatilisation, nitrous oxide emission and nitrate leaching and runoff. The prerequisite to any work on the reduction of losses and identification of best practices is the development of an assessment tool. However, the available knowledge regarding nitrogen losses is limited for oil palm, which leads to high uncertainty in environmental assessment.

In this context, we chose to develop an agri-environmental indicator, IN-Palm, which …

An Agent-Based Model For Studying The Effects Of Sustainable Intensification On Food Security In The Nation State, James Reilly, Terry Dawson, Robin Matthews, Gary Polhill, Pete Smith

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Growth in World’s population, the expansion of human activities and the demand for land has and continues to damage the natural environment. Humans depend on the natural environment for essential life-preserving processes, for example food production. Damage to the environment has serious consequences for national (State) and human security and well-being. One concern is food security and, in particular, whether a growing World population will find enough food to eat. The consequences of using more land and resources to grow more food are an important area of research. The expansion of farming will leave less land for other important uses. …

A Multipurpose Soil Inorganic Carbon Prediction Model, Ben W. Kolosz, Peter Manning, Jorat M. Ehsan, Saran P. Sohi, David A.C. Manning

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

There is a lack of models to predict soil inorganic carbon (SIC) which are not only multipurpose, but can predict SIC in a variety of soils and materials. The importance of estimating SIC stocks is due to the large contribution they make towards total carbon in some soils. This paper proposes such a model which aims to account for the variance and geographical range of soils. As an example, one such use is the accurate prediction of passive SIC sequestration rates as this is currently a complex challenge, mainly due to environmental effects such as water, temperature and atmospheric CO …

Residual Soil Nitrogen Scenario Analysis Of Canadian Farmland Using A Canadian Agricultural Nitrogen Budget (Canb V4.0) Model, Jingyi Yang, Craig Drury

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

A Canadian Agricultural Nitrogen Budget (CANB) model has been developed since 2002 to estimate Residual Soil Nitrogen (RSN) and N leaching loss across Canadian farmland. The current results showed that national RSN averages in Canadian farmland (annual N input minus annual N output) increased from 9.4 kg N ha-1 in 1981 to 23.6 kg N ha-1 in 2011 as mainly affected by the increase in synthetic fertilizer N usage and biological N2 fixation. With annual drainage, about 50 and 80% of residual soil N was lost in Central (Ontario and Quebec) and Atlantic Canada, respectively, through leaching and varying according …

The European Information Platform For Chemical Monitoring (Ipchem) - How Can You Realize Interoperability?, Gerlinde Knetsch, Maria Ruether

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Monitoring programs in Germany offer a large variety of data. On the one hand, these data are generated over many years in selected sampling areas; on the other hand, studies of monitoring take place in the context of research projects or other investigations. These data are often available in web-based information systems. Two databases will be presented with their potential for the interoperability with a (technical) platform for data of the chemical monitoring. The European project "Information Platform for Chemical Monitoring (IPCheM)" promotes networking of various existing databases and information systems with the goal of advancing the environmental data exchange …

Insects Have The Capacity For Subjective Experience, Colin Klein, Andrew B. Barron

Animal Sentience

To what degree are non-human animals conscious? We propose that the most meaningful way to approach this question is from the perspective of functional neurobiology. Here we focus on subjective experience, which is a basic awareness of the world without further reflection on that awareness. This is considered the most basic form of consciousness. Tellingly, this capacity is supported by the integrated midbrain and basal ganglia structures, which are among the oldest and most highly conserved brain systems in vertebrates. A reasonable inference is that the capacity for subjective experience is both widespread and evolutionarily old within the vertebrate lineage. …

Uncertainties In Estimating Design Droughts, Devanmini Halwatura, Alex M. Lechner, Neil Mcintyre, Sven Arnold

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Severity-duration–frequency (SDF) curves of periods of rainfall deficits are useful tools for drought analyses. However, accuracy of these curves are affected by uncertainties associated with a number of factors including: (i) the choice of drought index, (ii) the sampling error due to the limited length of observation data, (iii) the effects of aggregation of data with respect to drought timescales, (iv) the selection of marginal probability distribution functions of drought severity and duration, (v) and the type of copula used to approximate the dependency between severity and duration. In this paper we assess the impact of these uncertainties on estimates …

Development Of A Nutrient Load Apportionment Modelling Toolbox, Eva M. Mockler

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Where surface waters are impacted by excess nutrients, understanding the sources of those nutrients is key to the development of effective, targeted, mitigation measures. In Ireland, nutrient emissions remains the top suspected cause of surface waters not achieving the required Good Status, as defined by the Water Framework Directive (WFD). Hence, a toolbox has been developed to predict the sources of nutrients contributing to these emissions, and to assess future pressures and the likely effectiveness of targeted mitigation scenarios. This Source Load Apportionment Model (SLAM) supports catchment managers by providing scientifically robust evidence to back-up decision-making in relation to reducing …

Consideration Of Decision-Making Processes In Agent-Based Models Of Social-Ecological Systems, Pierre Mazzega, Christophe Sibertin-Blanc, Olivier Therond

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

The potential of Agent-Based Modeling is now well-established to address natural resource management and policy issues in social-ecological systems where a number of biophysical and anthropic processes interact. The selection of anthropic processes to be considered in a model according to the research question is not easy, due to modelers' difficulty to objectify and identify these processes. The paper proposes some criteria to identify anthropic processes, decide which ones to discard or retain and how to implement the latter. It is illustrated by the analysis of the governance sub-model of the MAELIA platform dedicated to the integrated assessment and simulation …

Implementing Urine Patches In A Dynamic Process- Based Simulation Model, V. O. Snow, R. Cichota, N. J. Hutchings, J. Vejlin

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Grazing ruminants harvest N from pasture in the entire paddock and then deposit between 40 and 80% of the ingested N into urine patches that cover only 2-4% of the paddock area during a typical rotational grazing event. While previous work has shown the importance of explicitly modelling these patches of very high N deposition, most process-based simulation models assume uniform return of N to the soil. The very few models that explicitly model urine patches within the paddock do so at significant, perhaps prohibitive, computational cost. We sought a solution that would preserve the most important biophysical effects but …

An Integrated Modelling Approach To Climate Change And Malaria Vulnerability Assessments, Esther Achieng Onyango, Oz Sahin, Cordia Chu, Brendan Mackey

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Malaria is one of the key research concerns in climate change-health relationships. Numerous risk assessments and modelling studies providing evidence that the transmission range of malaria will expand with rising temperatures resulting in adverse impacts on vulnerable communities. This risk is significant in East Africa whereby current research shows an expansion of malaria into the highland areas due to changes in temperature and rainfall. While there exist multiple lines of evidence for the influence of climate change on malaria and the risk posed to vulnerable communities, there is insufficient understanding of the complexity of factors influencing the spread of the …

Scientific Research Documentation - An Information Server For The National Park Hunsrück-Hochwald, Peter Fischer-Stabel, Micheal Mattern

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Within the world network of nature reserves, a national park is a park in use for conservation purposes. Beside it´s high value for nature and biodiversity, national parks are serving as sites for research, environmental monitoring, education and training. In order to ensure a long-lasting, central and efficient access to the literature and data on such a nature reserve for all scientists from the respective institutions, a research information portal was established for the National Park Hunsrück-Hochwald. Based on a user requirements analysis, a client-server architecture using open source components was set up. Core modules are a metadata-management component and …