Digital Commons Network^™

The Role Of Glia In Epilepsy, Intellectual Disability, And Other Neurodevelopmental Disorders In Tuberous Sclerosis Complex, Michael Wong

Open Access Publications

BACKGROUND: Tuberous sclerosis complex (TSC) is a genetic disorder characterized by severe neurological manifestations, including epilepsy, intellectual disability, autism, and a range of other behavioral and psychiatric symptoms, collectively referred to as TSC-associated neuropsychiatric disorders (TAND). Various tumors and hamartomas affecting different organs are the pathological hallmarks of the disease, especially cortical tubers of the brain, but specific cellular and molecular abnormalities, such as involving the mechanistic target of rapamycin (mTOR) pathway, have been identified that also cause or contribute to neurological manifestations of TSC independent of gross structural lesions. In particular, while neurons are immediate mediators of neurological symptoms, …

Editors' Preface And Precedential Opinion Summary, Timothy J. Muyano, Thalia Malespin, Matthew D. Venuti, Brett E. Broczkowski

Villanova Law Review (1956 - )

No abstract provided.

More Than A Century After Problem Emerged, Manhole Explosions Still Injuring Dozens In New York City, Gaspard Le Dem, Gabriel Sandoval

Capstones

Since the early days of electrification, New York City has been rattled by manhole explosions –– underground blasts that injure residents, damage buildings, force evacuations, cause power outages and traffic disruptions.

Consolidated Edison, the city's largest electric provider, has for decades blamed manhole issues on bad weather and road salt that erodes underground wires. But some experts and former utility workers say lack of maintenance is at the root of the problem.

Meanwhile, city and state officials have failed to rein in the problem through weak laws and loose oversight. As a result, unsuspecting drivers and pedestrians continue to be …

South Bronx Waterfront, Noah Lewis

Capstones

The waterfronts of New York City have seen dramatic transformation and development over the past several decades. Developers have taken advantage of the coveted real estate space and constructed glass monoliths along Manhattan’s shores on the East and Hudson Rivers.

More recent developments in Long Island City and Williamsburg’s waterfront have seen waterfronts transform, and neighborhoods are unrecognizable from where they used to be. But as development continues in those areas, many developers are being priced out, and the Bronx is the logical next step in the process.

This project includes photos, videos, and animations of the South Bronx Waterfront. …

Diatoms Dominate And Alter Marine Food-Webs When Co2 Rises, Ben P. Harvey, Sylvain Agostini, Koetsu Kon, Shigeki Wada, Jason M. Hall-Spencer

School of Biological and Marine Sciences

Diatoms are so important in ocean food-webs that any human induced changes in their abundance could have major effects on the ecology of our seas. The large chain-forming diatom Biddulphia biddulphiana greatly increases in abundance as pCO2 increases along natural seawater CO2 gradients in the north Pacific Ocean. In areas with reference levels of pCO2, it was hard to find, but as seawater carbon dioxide levels rose, it replaced seaweeds and became the main habitat-forming species on the seabed. This diatom algal turf supported a marine invertebrate community that was much less diverse and completely differed from the benthic communities …

Winter Anthropology In Finland: Exploring ‘Green Care’ In Low Light, J Tredinnick-Rowe

Peninsula Medical School

This photo essay discusses some of the methodological issues for medical anthropology in the environmental human health sector, particularly, how season and latitude shape the types of anthropology that can be employed, the activities that can be undertaken, and their aesthetic effect on visual ethnography. The essay recounts the author’s experiences conducting ethnographic studies in the winter months in Finland and discusses the various challenges that environmental conditions produce for researchers.

Crazy Rich Karachi — Where The Streets Are Paved With Gold, Murtaza Irfan Ali

MSJ Capstone Projects

Karachi happens to be Pakistan’s economic powerhouse but the irony is it never received its fair share of development. Which is why, to this day, I have no clue where to park, when I visit the southern district of the city. The random and sporadic parking has costed me with a hundred scratches and 2 pairs of side-view mirrors during the course of a year. So to find exactly where I could safely and “legally” park, I set out to find some answers.

Medical School Watercooler Newsletter - December 15, 2019, Lindsey Lyle

Watercooler Newsletter

This is the December 15, 2019 edition of the Frederick P. Whiddon College of Medicine's Newsletter - Watercooler.

Contents Include:

Register Now: Pediatric Symposium set for Jan. 17

USA College of Medicine teams up with Yale on mosquito research

Barrington receives grant to develop data on rare lung disease

Regional Gene Repression By Dna Double-Strand Breaks In G1 Phase Cells, Caitlin E. Purman, Patrick L. Collins, Sofia I. Porter, Ankita Saini, Harshath Gupta, Barry P. Sleckman, Eugene M. Oltz

Open Access Publications

DNA damage responses (DDR) to double-strand breaks (DSBs) alter cellular transcription programs at the genome-wide level. Through processes that are less well understood, DSBs also alter transcriptional responses locally, which may be important for efficient DSB repair. Here, we developed an approach to elucidate the

Comedy Of Menace In Harold Pinter’S The Birthday Party Instructor: Basaad Maher Mhayyal, بسعاد ماهر محيل

Alustath Journal for Human and Social Sciences

Harold Pinter’s The Birthday Party (1957) clearly portrays the condition of modern man where there is a real communication failure among the characters. Through this play, Pinter tries his best to reflect this fact. He uses a lot of pauses and silences, i.e., the usage of language is no more significant to modern man. Pinter considers silence to be more powerful than the words themselves. That’s why long and short pauses can be seen throughout all Pinter’s plays. Modern man has been living in a state of alienation. All the characters are isolated by their own desire not to communicate …

The Image Of Politicians In Tony Kushner’S Play Homebody/Kabul; A Corpus Critical Stylistic Analysis, Hadeel Falah Hasan, Sarab Khalil Hameed

Alustath Journal for Human and Social Sciences

This article discusses the Critical Stylistic analysis of the politicians’ images in corpora of Tony Kushner’s play Homebody/Kabul. The study adopts Jeffries model with the aid of corpus linguistic methods to show how text might be said to perform ideologies. It investigates how the image of war and politicians are presented. By using Naming and Describing tool, the analysis shows that the overall image of politicians is that they were aggressive when it comes to conduct war depending on what have they declared to be done.

Ecocritical Consciousness In Shakespeare’S The Winter’S Tale, Birzo Abdulkadir Mohammad, Azad Hamad Sharif

Alustath Journal for Human and Social Sciences

The present study focuses on the eco critical elements in The Winter’s Tale (1610-1611) by William Shakespeare (1564 –1616), which is an outstanding example of the literary writing communicating ecological consciousness. Having examined William Shakespeare’s contribution to understanding nature it can be stated that nature is one of the key concepts of the author. He was highly aware of the nature and humans connection, importance of nature as both utilitarian and spiritual object. That is why Shakespeare’s concept of nature is colored with mainly positive tones. The most typical words for natural world are “fine” and “beauty”. In contrast to …

Gender Differences In Early Communication, Language Acquisition And Development: A Descriptive Study, رشا عبد الرضا سعيد, رشا عبد المنعم عزيز

Alustath Journal for Human and Social Sciences

Parents pay a significant attention to the first words children utter. However, first words are not the actual beginning of communication. Much earlier, babies begin to communicate their feeling via making eye contact, pointing, crying, squealing, and other gestures. Furthermore, they perceive language earlier than making others understand them. The aim of this paper is to tackle the variations between the two sexes starting from the stages of language acquisition in normal children, the differences between the two genders in language vocalization within each stage. Next, the distinctions in acquiring a particular communicative competence and the causes behind this difference …

Dramatizing Modern American And Arabic Poetry A Study In Selected Poems By Kenneth Koch And Yousif Al-Sayegh, Haitham K. Eidan Al-Zubbaidi

Alustath Journal for Human and Social Sciences

The interrelatedness of drama and poetry introduces one of the most exceptionally robust examples of trans-genre literature. It is further characterized by a deep-rooted tradition that dates back to ancient Greek and Roman drama, as well as a sense of circumstantial and ad hoc necessity-driven, age-oriented adaptability. The present paper assumes that this well-established sensitive relation of poetry and drama rests upon some circumstantial time-specific cultural forces or motivators that impact the ebb and flow, the expansion-contraction movements which are directly related to the temporal necessities and requirements of the textual and contextual poetic discourse. To this end, and to …

A Noncanonical Function Of The Telomerase Rna Component In Human Embryonic Stem Cells, Kirsten Ann Brenner

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

Telomeres are stretches of TTAGGG nucleotide repeats located at the ends of linear chromosomes that shorten with progressive cell division and prevent genomic instability at the cost of limiting a cell’s capacity to proliferate. This limitation can be overcome by telomerase, a ribonucleoprotein complex that elongates telomeres via reverse-transcription of the template telomerase RNA component (TERC). Recent studies have reported potential functions of TERC outside of its role in telomere maintenance. These noncanonical functions of TERC are however poorly defined, and the molecular mechanisms and biological relevance behind such functions remain elusive. Here, we generated conditional TERC knock-out human embryonic …

Perceptual Precedence Or Increased Effort?: On The Mechanism Of The Small-Picture-Size Advantage In Category Learning, Toshiya Miyatsu

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

I have previously identified a novel perceptual manipulation that enhances learning of some complex natural categories, and the current dissertation aims to uncover its mechanism. Specifically, learning of categories of tropical fish was enhanced when learned through small pictures (about 2º) compared to large pictures (about 19º). Through analyzing the previous results and extant theories in various domains, I identified two potential mechanisms through which this small-picture-size advantage manifested. The perceptual precedence hypothesis postulates that the processing of local dimensions is prioritized in large pictures and the processing of global dimensions is prioritized in small pictures. Therefore, small picture size …

Devising A Scalable Synthesis To Probe The G-Protein Cell Receptor Signaling Pathway, Matthew Robert Medcalf

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

The G-protein coupled cell receptor signaling pathway is amongst the largest and most diverse class of cell-surface receptors in the body. Nearly 800 different genes encode for these cell membrane receptors which are responsible for mediating a variety of hormones, neurotransmitters, and sensory stimuli through the activation of intracellular G proteins. To date, roughly 34% of pharmaceuticals on the market target GPCR’s, but despite this fact, there are still many difficulties associated with targeting this family of receptors. The vast number of GPCR’s, disease states resulting from a dysregulation of multiple GPCR signaling pathways, and difficulties crystalizing and purifying the …

Phylogenetic And Genomic Characterization Of The Host-Pathogen Arms Race Between Bacterial Pathogens And Gossypium Hirsutum, Anne Zimmerman Phillips

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

Hosts and pathogens are eternally intertwined in an evolutionary arms race. When a pathogen causes a disease outbreak, scientists must identify resistance strategies that can durably tilt the arms race in favor of the host. This requires a deep understanding of both the genetic and environmental contexts in which the outbreak occurs. In this thesis I investigate the bacterial pathogens Xanthomonas citri pv. malvacearum (Xcm) and Pseudomonas syringae that caused disease outbreaks on Gossypium hirsutum from 2011-2017. I use pathogen genomics and host transcriptomics to develop hypotheses for how these pathogens emerged and how they cause disease. Phylogenetics and virulence …

An Evolving Epigenome That Determines Tissue And Cell Specificity, Renee Louise Sears

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

Understanding the mechanisms driving phenotypic variation is a major goal of biology that unifies classical genetics with the emerging fields of genomics and epigenomics. Human and mouse share over 90% of genes and global tissue-specific patterns of expression are maintained between the species. Thus, it is hypothesized that gene expression is influenced through distinctive regulation among species in order to account for the unmistakable phenotypic divergence. DNA methylation, histone modifications, open chromatin patterns, transcription factor binding, and other epigenetic factors are all associated with shaping, maintaining, and repressing regulatory regions which in turn coordinate gene expression. It is vital to …

Development Of High-Speed Photoacoustic Imaging Technology And Its Applications In Biomedical Research, Yun He

McKelvey School of Engineering Graduate Student Theses & Dissertations

Photoacoustic (PA) tomography (PAT) is a novel imaging modality that combines the fine lateral resolution from optical imaging and the deep penetration from ultrasonic imaging, and provides rich optical-absorption–based images. PAT has been widely used in extracting structural and functional information from both ex vivo tissue samples to in vivo animals and humans with different length scales by imaging various endogenous and exogenous contrasts at the ultraviolet to infrared spectrum. For example, hemoglobin in red blood cells is of particular interest in PAT since it is one of the dominant absorbers in tissue at the visible wavelength.The main focus of …

Contemporary Problems In Aerosol Aggregation And Gelation, Pai Liu

McKelvey School of Engineering Graduate Student Theses & Dissertations

Aggregation of nanoparticles in aerosols is a fundamental phenomenon with important implications to diverse fields ranging from material synthesis to pollutant control. The past few decades have witnessed extensive research on investigating the structure and growth mechanism of aerosol aggregates with sizes spanning across several orders of magnitude. This dissertation focuses on some contemporary problems that remain unaddressed in this topical area. Aerosol aggregates in sub-micron regimes, which are formed via the irreversible collision and aggregation of solid nanoparticle monomers, are fractal-like in their morphology. A mathematical description of this seemingly random structure dates to the seminal works by Forest …

Thinking Through Tubes: Flowing H/Air And Synaesthesia, Stephen P. Hugh-Jones

Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America

The tube, as both object and concept, has cropped up from time to time in the ethnography of lowland South America, most notably in Rivière and Lévi-Strauss’s discussions of blowpipes, hair tubes and pottery and in Hill and Wright's writings on Yuruparí flutes and trumpets. Using data from Northwest Amazonia, this paper first seeks to provide a more rigorous definition of the tube as a concept, exploring its various manifestations and relating these to the body as an image of totalization and detotalization. With reference to myths about creation and Yuruparí, the paper then argues that flows from tubes provide …

Good Reasons Or Bad Conscience? Or Why Some Indian Peoples Of Amazonia Are Ambivalent About Eating Meat, Stephen P. Hugh-Jones

Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America

Originally written for a conference on meat attended by farmers, anthropologists, people involved in cultural affairs, and other members of the public, and seeking to avoid emphasis on cultural difference, this paper explores common ground between Euro-American and Amerindian ambivalence about meat consumption. Meat-eating raises two shared concerns: an intuitive recognition of the resemblances between humans and animals and an uncomfortable awareness that human life often depends on the death and destruction of other living beings. I suggest that, behind some obvious cultural differences, Amazonian shamanic and ritual procedures aimed at the de-subjectification of meat share points in common with …

The "Uncontacted" As Third Infamy, George Mentore

Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America

This paper principally addresses the "problem" of anthropological thinking, that is, on how and why it remains with us and not with the peoples who do not subscribe to our contested regimes of truth. From my research on the topic, it appears we have not achieved any substantial moral progress on the question of exposure to indigenous otherness since the first European "contact." This failure is primarily due to our hardheaded rationalist refusal to accept our inability to access the felt reality of the Other directly. Or, better still, of the failure of our language to obtain the shared reality …

Christianity + Schooling On Nature Versus Culture In Amazonia, Aparecida M. N. Vilaça

Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America

Based on the analysis of Evangelical Biblical translations, as well as on the school writing of Wari' (Southwestern Amazonia) students, produced in indigenous secondary school classrooms and at the intercultural university, this article aims to show how, in both church and school, a nature separate from humans is invented with which they should relate in a utilitarian and also contemplative way. Simultaneously nature’s opposite is invented–a culture that excludes animals and subjects them.

Tubes And Androgyny: Comment On "Thinking Through Tubes", Françoise Barbira Freedman

Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America

In this comment on Stephen Hugh-Jones’s "Thinking Through Tubes" Françoise Barbira Freedman offers a feminist meditation on the semiotics of androgyny in Northwest Amazonian shamanism, ritual life and mythology. By focusing on processes of detotalization and retotalization that move beings from an androgynous state to a single-sex identity and back again, Barbira Freedman reveals a dynamic "one sex, two genders model of androgyny" that could not be further from a concept of androgyny as blurred gender. These movements in and out of a one sex state are largely the preserve of men so that androgynous features of the cosmos are …

A Story Of Two Videos Plus Coda: Perspectives On "Contact" In Western Amazonia, Giancarlo Rolando

Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America

In 2014, the Xinane people of Brazilian Amazonia made international news after two videos showing scenes of their “first contact” were uploaded to the internet. This paper explores the ways in which different audiences reacted to news about this “first contact.” Local Peruvian and Brazilian settlers, the international public, and the Mastanawa, a people culturally proximate to the Xinane, had different readings of this event and expressed opposing views concerning what actions should have been taken following the events depicted in the videos. These differences in opinion are telling of the different ways in which each group thinks of “isolated …

Engendering Houses: The Topological Conception Of Gender Pioneered By Stephen And Christine Hugh-Jones, Klaus Hamberger

Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America

Stephen and Christine Hugh-Jones were the first anthropologists not only to demonstrate that the gender value of places and directions depends on the frame of reference and the point of view but to turn this insight into a fruitful principle on which to base transformational analysis. By analyzing the metamorphoses of gender brought about by changes of perspective or scale, they have brought to light the spatial character of the gender concept. As their examinations of Barasana architecture, ritual performance, and domestic work have shown, the relativity of gender is at its core an aspect of the relativity of space. …

The Symbolism Of Play Behavior In Child-Centered Play Therapy, Kaitlin Andrewjeski

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Child-Centered Play Therapy (CCPT) is an evidence-based approach for mental health treatment with children. CCPT is based on the belief that play is a child’s natural language and so the therapist is required to make inferences of themes through observations of free play; however, there is no standard process by which themes are identified. The purpose of the current study is to gain detailed descriptions of play behavior in order to describe how themes emerge and how they are displayed in child-centered treatment. The themes were then used to describe the progression through the typical stages of child-centered play therapy. …

Mojave Desert Ecosystem Recovery: Potency Of Biotic And Abiotic Restoration Methods In Low Elevation Plant Communities, Mary Amanda Balogh

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The historic and current state of land in the Mojave Desert, including land managed by the National Park Service with fundamental goals of natural resource conservation and preservation, been severely degraded by a variety of anthropogenic disturbances. Due to increasingly sporadic and unpredictable precipitation patterns, land managers struggle to implement restoration projects with high success rates and are resource-limited for post-treatment monitoring. In this study, I examined success rates of biotic (outplanting, seeding) and abiotic (soil manipulation, vertical mulch) restoration treatments on various disturbance types in the creosote-bursage (Larrea tridentata-Ambrosia dumosa), blackbrush (Coleogyne ramosissima), and Joshua tree woodland (Yucca brevifolia) …