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Suffolk Journal, Vol. 82, No.5, 10/17/2018, Suffolk Journal

Suffolk Journal

No abstract provided.

Effects Of Landscape Heterogeneity And Forest Management On Digestibility Of White Tailed Deer Diets, Laurel Marie Glover

Research Awards

No abstract provided.

Tolle Lege Works Published In 2018, Mcquade Library

Bibliographies

Compiled Tolle Lege bibliography of works published by members of the Merrimack College Community in 2018. Works include journal articles, books, book chapters, conference presentations and posters, and more.

2018 First Look, Nova Southeastern University

First Look

No abstract provided.

Donut Hole Fall 2018, Medicare Donations & Design Committee

Donut Hole Newsletter

No abstract provided.

Make America Discriminate Again? Why Hobby Lobby's Expansion Of Rfra Is Bad Medicine For Transgender Health Care, Alexis M. Florczak

Health Matrix: The Journal of Law-Medicine

The article highlights the implications of the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in "Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc." which held for-profit corporations could be exempt from the Affordable Care Act's (ACA)contraceptive mandate because of their sincerely held religious beliefs. Topics discussed include ACA Nondiscrimination or Civil Rights provision provides valuable protections to transgender individuals; and Department of Health and Human Services' further guidance on the ACA's provision.

Flexible Robotic Actuators, Stephen A. Morin, Robert F. Shepherd, Adam Stokes, Filip Ilievski, Ramses V. Martinez, Jamie L. Branch, Carina R. Fish, Lihua Jin, Rui M. D. Nunes, Zhigang Suo, George M. Whitesides

Department of Chemistry: Faculty Publications

Systems and methods for providing flexible robotic actuators are disclosed. Some embodiments of the disclosed subject matter include a soft robot capable of providing a radial deflection motions; a soft tentacle actuator capable of providing a variety of motions and providing transportation means for various types of materials; and a hybrid robotic system that retains desirable characteristics of both soft robots and hard robots. Some embodiments of the disclosed subject matter also include methods for operating the dis closed robotic systems.

Bruno: Modern Europe's First Free Thinker, Edward Jayne

English Faculty Publications

First paragraph: By most accounts Giordano Bruno (1548-1600) was by far the most controversial Renaissance philosopher. He published at least sixty texts upon a large variety of topics including mnemonics, hermetic religion, Copernican astronomy, and the renewed possibility of materialism as suggested by this major breakthrough in astronomy. For the most part his notoriety resulted from his defense of heliocentric theory, but also from his pursuit of its theoretical implications toward a modern renewal of ancient secular philosophy. Just as Bacon bridged the gap between Aristotelian philosophy and modern science, Bruno no less effectively served the same purpose between ancient …

Evaluating The Discriminating Capacity Of Cell Death (Apoptotic) Biomarkers In Sepsis., Christopher Duplessis, Michael Gregory, Kenneth Frey, Matthew Bell, Luu Truong, Kevin Schully, James Lawler, Raymond J. Langley, Stephen F. Kingsmore, Christopher W. Woods, Emanuel P. Rivers, Anja K. Jaehne, Eugenia B. Quackenbush, Vance G. Fowler, Ephraim L. Tsalik, Danielle Clark

Emergency Medicine Articles

Background: Sepsis biomarker panels that provide diagnostic and prognostic discrimination in sepsis patients would be transformative to patient care. We assessed the mortality prediction and diagnostic discriminatory accuracy of two biomarkers reflective of cell death (apoptosis), circulating cell-free DNA (cfDNA), and nucleosomes.

Methods: The cfDNA and nucleosome levels were assayed in plasma samples acquired in patients admitted from four emergency departments with suspected sepsis. Subjects with non-infectious systemic inflammatory response syndrome (SIRS) served as controls. Samples were acquired at enrollment (T0) and 24 h later (T24). We assessed diagnostic (differentiating SIRS from sepsis) and prognostic (28-day mortality) predictive power. Models …

Evaluation Of The Association Between Genetic Variants In Circadian Rhythm Genes And Posttraumatic Stress Symptoms Identifies A Potential Functional Allele In The Transcription Factor, Sarah D. Linnstaedt, Yue Pan, Matthew C. Mauck, Jenyth Sullivan, Christine Y. Zhou, Lindsey Jung, Cathleen A. Rueckeis, Jameson D. Blount, Matthew S. Carson, Andrew S. Tungate, Michael C. Kurz, Phyllis L. Hendry, Christopher A. Lewandowski, Teresa D'Anza, Elizabeth Datner, Kathy Bell, Megan Lechner, Jeffrey W. Shupp, Bruce A. Cairns, Samuel A. Mclean

Emergency Medicine Articles

Previous studies suggest that genetic variants within genes affecting the circadian rhythm influence the development of posttraumatic stress symptoms (PTSS). In the present study, we used data from three emergency care-based cohorts to search genetic variants in circadian pathway genes previously associated with neuropsychiatric disorders for variants that influence PTSS severity. The three cohorts used included a discovery cohort of African American men and women enrolled following motor vehicle collision (n = 907) and two replication cohorts: one of multi-ethnic women enrolled following sexual assault (n = 274) and one of multi-ethnic men and women enrolled following major …

A Semantically Enhanced Approach To Identify Depression-Indicative Symptoms Using Twitter Data, Ankita Saxena

Browse all Theses and Dissertations

According to the World Health Organization, more than 300 million people suffer from Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) worldwide. PHQ-9 is used to screen and diagnose MDD clinically and identify its severity. With the unprecedented growth and enthusiastic acceptance of social media such as Twitter, a large number of people have come to share their feelings and emotions on it openly. Each tweet can indicate a user's opinion, thought or feeling. A tweet can also indicate multiple symptoms related to PHQ-9. Identifying PHQ-9 symptoms indicated by a tweet can provide crucial information about a user regarding his/her depression diagnosis. The current …

Librarians In The Lead: A Case For Interdisciplinary Faculty Collaboration On Assignment Design, Rachel Wishkoski, Kacy Lundstrom, Erin Davis

Library Faculty & Staff Publications

Assignment design provides a potential niche for librarians to fill in improving research assignments and in providing opportunities for interdisciplinary collaboration on teaching, but this can be difficult work to claim as librarians. In the 2016-2017 academic year, a team of three librarians at Utah State University, a mid-size research university, piloted an assignment design workshop for faculty. Based on a model developed by the National Institute for Learning Outcomes Assessment (NILOA), our workshop’s core component was a structured, librarian-facilitated small group discussion among three to four faculty members from a range of academic departments. Interdisciplinary conversation about teaching research …

Systematic Review And Meta-Analysis: Tuberculosis, Tnfα Inhibitors, And Crohn's Disease, Brent L. Cao

Honors Undergraduate Theses

Inflammation is often a protective reaction against harmful foreign agents. However, in many disease conditions, the mechanisms behind the inflammatory response are poorly understood. Often times, the inflammation causes adverse effects, such as joint pain, abdominal pain, fever, fatigue, and loss of appetite. Thus, many treatments aim to inhibit the inflammatory response in order to control adverse symptoms. Such treatments include TNFα inhibitors. However, a major risk associated with drugs inhibiting tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNFα) is serious infection, including tuberculosis (TB).

Anti-TNFα therapy is used to treat patients with Crohn’s disease, for which the risk of tuberculosis may be …

Development Of Methods To Modulate Natural Killer Cells, Kari A. Shaver

Honors Undergraduate Theses

Natural Killer (NK) cell based immunotherapies have demonstrated success against malignancies and hematological cancers. However, tumors have developed mechanisms to evade detection by and suppress the immune system, commonly through altering the expression of cell-surface proteins. Overexpression of human leukocyte antigen-E (HLA-E), which binds to the inhibitory NKG2A on NK cells, protects malignant cells from lysis. Downregulating the NKG2A receptor on NK cells should release NK cell inhibition, but proves challenging as NK cells are difficult to transfect and no good methods currently exist. This project is designed to investigate the use of exosomes – small vesicles and natural carriers …

Targeted Delivery Of A Therapeutic Protein For The Treatment Of Alzheimer's Disease, Heather Holman

Honors Undergraduate Theses

Neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson's disease and Alzheimer's disease are linked to mitochondrial dysfunction and the underexpression of TOM40, a protein with chaperone-like qualities that is responsible for transporting precursor proteins into the mitochondria. Overexpression of TOM40 is reported to partially restore mitochondrial dysfunction and decrease the accumulation of neurotoxic aggregates of α-synuclein. Our goal is to develop an effective method for delivery of TOM40 protein to the brain.

Previous studies have used lentiviruses to carry TOM40 into the hippocampus of α-synuclein transgenic mice. The disadvantage of lentiviral transfection is the random insertions of the target gene into the host …

Baseline White Matter Hyperintensities And Hippocampal Volume Are Associated With Conversion From Normal Cognition To Mild Cognitive Impairment In The Framingham Offspring Study., Katherine J Bangen, Sarah R Preis, Lisa Delano-Wood, Philip A Wolf, David J Libon, Mark W Bondi, Rhoda Au, Charles Decarli, Adam M Brickman

Rowan-Virtua School of Osteopathic Medicine Departmental Research

INTRODUCTION: We examined associations between magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) markers of cerebrovascular disease and neurodegeneration with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) diagnosis at baseline and conversion from normal cognition to MCI at follow-up.

METHODS: Framingham Offspring participants underwent brain MRI and neuropsychological assessment at baseline (n=1049) and follow-up (n=561). Participants were classified at baseline and at follow-up as cognitively normal or MCI using sensitive neuropsychological criteria. White matter hyperintensity (WMH) volume, covert brain infarcts, hippocampal volume, and total cerebral brain volume were quantified.

RESULTS: Baseline measures of WMH and hippocampal volume were associated with MCI status cross-sectionally and also with conversion …

State Action That Penalizes Children As Evidence Of A Desire To Harm Politically Unpopular Parents, Catherine E. Smith

Scholarly Articles

This Article is the first to advance the position that when the government takes the extreme step of denying children basic rights and benefits because of their parents, such state action should be recognized not just as evidence of animus against the children, but also as evidence of "a bare desire to harm" their "politically unpopular" parents. Identifying this type of government motivation and calling it what it is--animus toward parents--is just as important as condemning animus against the children themselves. Anti-parent animus that motivates harmful government behavior towards children should be prohibited as an impermissible means to accomplish an …

The Second Amendment V. The Environment: Florida's Transformation Of Gun Range Environmental Liability, Rachel E. Deming

Colorado Environmental Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Audubon Data Project Final Report, Askhat Beygenov, Valinur Kutlambetov, Shrikant Patel, Phoebe Roberts, Ulfat Sayyed, Shriram Sivaraman

School of Professional Studies

The Audubon Data Project was initiated as a Clark University Capstone project. The project’s client, Mass Audubon’s Shaping the Future of Your Community program, had identified a need to improve their data management methods and make better use of their data. The Capstone team, composed of Clark University graduate students, met with the client regularly to review the current state of the data and potential improvements to be made. The process began with a data review. During the review we worked with the client to explicitly define the purposes and requirements of the data, the current process for updating and …

Prairie Restoration Series: Seeding, Dave Williams

Tallgrass Prairie Publications and Reports

Deciding when to plant a prairie is a challenge. Some species establish better when spring-planted, other species establish better when fall-planted and some species are hard to establish whenever they are planted. Seeding rates of some species may need to be increased depending on when and how they are planted.

Prairie seed can be planted by broadcast seeding, hydroseeding, and drill seeding. Regardless of the seeding method used, it is essential that seed be planted at the proper depth and with good seed-to-soil contact.

Ontogenetic Colour Change In Oreophryne Ezra (Anura: Microhylidae) Reflects An Unusual Shift From Conspicuousness To Crypsis But Not In Toxicity, M. W. Bulbert, T. E. White, Ralph Saporito, F. Kraus

2018 Faculty Bibliography

Ontogenetic colour change (OCC) may signal a switch in defensive strategies across development. Commonly, juveniles use cryptic colours and transition to conspicuous coloration as adults. Extensive theoretical and empirical work suggest such a transition is more likely than the converse. Oreophryne ezra, a newly discovered frog from New Guinea, however, undergoes OCC that belies expectations. We investigated the notion juveniles are aposematic while the adults use crypsis. We quantified the extent of conspicuousness of O. ezra across life stages using spectrophotometry and models of avian vision; and analysed skin extracts for the presence of toxic alkaloids. As predicted, the juvenile …

Prospective Comparison Of The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-2 (Mmpi-2) And Mmpi-2-Restructured Form (Mmpi-2-Rf) In Predicting Treatment Outcomes Among Patients With Chronic Low Back Pain, Anthony M. Tarescavage

2018 Faculty Bibliography

The purpose of the current study was to examine the relative utility of the most updated MMPI adult instrument, the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-2-Restructured Form (MMPI-2-RF), which was designed to address psychometric limitations of the MMPI-2. To this end, we compared mean scores and correlates of emotional distress treatment outcomes using the Depression Anxiety Stress Scales in a sample of 230 patients (73 males, 157 females) who had completed an interdisciplinary chronic pain rehabilitation program. Structural equation modeling analyses indicated that higher scale scores from all the MMPI-2-RF substantive domains were meaningfully associated with worse emotional distress outcomes, whereas the …

An Empirical Test Indicates Only Qualitatively Honest Aposematic Signaling Within A Population Of Vertebrates, Adam M.M. Stuckert, Ralph Saporito, Kyle Summers

2018 Faculty Bibliography

Signaling is an important part of intraspecific and interspecific interactions. Theoretical work examining honest signaling in aposematic species (e.g., those with conspicuous colors and secondary defenses) has focused primarily on discerning the patterns between conspicuousness and defense within populations. Most empirical work, however, has investigated these patterns across populations or species. Here, we test for honest signaling across individuals within a population of the aposematic poison frog, Ranitomeya imitator. We find no evidence that increasing levels of the aposematic signal are correlated with increasing levels of defense in this species, indicating that our study population does not signal in a …

Nunduva, A New Marine Genus Of Rivulariaceae (Nostocales, Cyanobacteria) From Marine Rocky Shores, Laura Gonzales-Resendiz, Jeffrey R. Johansen, Luisa Alba-Lois, Claudia Segal–Kischinevzky, Viviana Escobar–Sánchez, Luis F. Jimenez Garcia4, Tomáš Hauer, Hilda León–Tejera

2018 Faculty Bibliography

Several populations of a non–tapering and tapering, fasciculated, single and geminate false branch- ing heterocytous cyanobacterium were collected from rocky shores in the Pacific Ocean and Gulf of Mexico. The populations were provisionally placed in Brasilonema based on morphology, but upon sequencing of both environmental and culture material it was discovered that the populations/cultures belonged to the Rivulariaceae, in a marine subclade of the family containing Kyrtuthrix huatulcensis. In culture, the taxon exhibited tapering in isopolar filaments, providing further evidence that it was a member of the rivulariacean clade. Based on molecular data for other cyanobacteria within the rivulariacean clade, …

Revision Of The Synechococcales (Cyanobacteria) Through Recognition Of Four Families Including Oculatellaceae Fam. Nov. And Trichocoleaceae Fam. Nov. And Six New Genera Containing 14 Species, Truc Mai, Jeffrey R. Johansen, Nicole Pietrasiak, Marketa Bohunicka, Michael P. Martin

2018 Faculty Bibliography

A total of 48 strains of thin, filamentous cyanobacteria in Synechococcales were studied by sequencing 16S rRNA and rpo C1 sequence fragments. We also carefully characterized a subset of these by morphology. Phylogenetic analysis of the 16S rRNA gene data using Bayesian inference of a large Synechococcales alignment (345 OTU’s) was in agreement with the phylogeny based on the rpo C1 gene for 59 OTU’s. Both indicated that the large family-level grouping formerly classified as the Leptolyngbyaceae could be further divided into four family-level clades. Two of these family-level clades have been recognized previously as Leptolyngbyaceae and Prochlorotrichaceae. Oculatellaceae fam. …

Synthesis Of Trisubstitiuted Indolizines: Mechanistic Studies, Miles M. Mason, Leslie A. Nickerson, Emily E. Zerull, Carolyn E. Anderson

Summer Research

Indolizines are a versatile heterocyclic core, found frequently in pharmaceutical targets, for a wide variety of therapeutic areas, including: anti-bacterial1 and anti-tumor,2 in addition to targets against Alzheimer’s disease,3 asthma,4 erectile dysfunction,5 and inflammation related to respiratory or cardiovascular disease

Investigating The Effects Of Antibiotics Perturbation On Lactobacillus Species Metabolomics Profiles, Sophia Lee, Kundi Yang, Jiangjiang (Chris) Zhu

Summer Research

Our gut microbiota contains a vast array of cells that influence human physiology, metabolism, nutrition and immune function. Lactobacillus is a group of Gram-positive, lactic acid bacteria that is naturally present in the human gastrointestinal tract. Some species are probiotics that provide beneficial health effects to humans. Many studies have investigated and noted their various health benefits to their human host, including prevention of certain diseases such as colon cancer, breaking down of food, and absorption of nutrients. Maintaining the balance of our normal flora is essential - even small perturbations to the microbiota can have significant health effects. It …

Elucidating Genotype-Phenotype Relationships In Bcs1l Mutations, Kalina Reese, Shannon Stewart, Rachael Baker, Amy Wilstermann

Summer Research

• Establish a yeast model system for the study of BCS1L function.
• Develop assays to investigate differences in mitochondrial efficiency and electron transport chain functionality of BCS1L mutants.
• Connect hearing-loss associated BCS1L mutations to mitochondrial structure and function to better explain the clinical variation observed in patients with BCS1L mutations

Winter Commencement, 2018, Marshall University

Marshall University Commencement

Program for the 2018 Winter Commencement of Marshall University.

The Signature Of Undetected Change: An Exploratory Electrotomographic Investigation Of Gradual Change Blindness, John E. Kiat, Michael D. Dodd, Robert F. Belli, Jacob E. Cheadle

Department of Psychology: Faculty Publications

Neuroimaging-based investigations of change blindness, a phenomenon in which seemingly obvious changes in visual scenes fail to be detected, have significantly advanced our understanding of visual awareness. The vast majority of prior investigations, however, utilize paradigms involving visual disruptions (e.g., intervening blank screens, saccadic movements, “mudsplashes”), making it difficult to isolate neural responses toward visual changes cleanly. To address this issue in this present study, high-density EEG data (256 channel) were collected from 25 participants using a paradigm in which visual changes were progressively introduced into detailed real-world scenes without the use of visual disruption. Oscillatory activity associated with undetected …