Digital Commons Network^™

Regional Distribution, Life History, And Morphometry Of Spawning Stage Capelin Mallotus Villosus, Kirsten N. Ressel

Fisheries

Capelin Mallotus villosus is a forage fish that is integral to many Arctic and subarctic marine food webs, but is less thoroughly studied outside the Atlantic Ocean. The goal of this research was to study spawning Capelin in data-poor areas, particularly in waters off the coast of Alaska and the western Canadian Arctic, to enrich baseline data and allude to intraspecies diversity. Chapter one examined the distribution and life history of spawning Capelin in Norton Sound, Alaska, by conducting aerial surveys, collecting sediment samples to characterize beach spawning habitats, and identifying biological attributes of spawners (e.g., body size, age, fecundity, …

Foraging Tactics Of Humpback Whales Feeding Near Salmon Hatchery-Release Sites In Southeast Alaska, Madison M. Kosma

Fisheries

Increases in the humpback whale (Megaptera novaeangliae) population have generated considerable interest in understanding the foraging habits of these large marine predators in the Gulf of Alaska. Globally, humpback whales are classified as generalist predators but are known to exhibit localized differences in diet. Intensified predation pressure is of particular concern to resource managers, who have observed whales feeding at juvenile hatchery salmon release sites in Southeast Alaska. We assessed the diets and behavioral tactics of humpback whales foraging near Hidden Falls Hatchery release sites (in Chatham Strait, 2016 to 2018) to better understand their predatory effects on juvenile hatchery-reared …

“Treat Me Covalently” – New Tools To Improve Covalent Drug Design For Advancement Of Cancer Treatments, Yuliya Mazo

Student Theses and Dissertations

The goal of this project was to investigate the complex mechanism of covalent bonding among different molecules and their targets in a modeling software ICM-Pro. Specifically, it included the identification of fundamental aspects of a covalent bonding mechanism of the Michael addition reaction. Michael addition reaction of electrophilic α, β-unsaturated carbonyl compounds with a nucleophilic cysteine residue in thymidylate synthase, papain, and EGFR tyrosine kinase were examined. Thymidylate synthase and EGFR were chosen because they are important targets in the treatment of various types of cancer. In order to find the most optimal parameters, identification and assessment of the effect …

Mutation Signature Analysis Identifies Increased Mutation Caused By Tobacco Smoke Associated Dna Adducts In Larynx Squamous Cell Carcinoma Compared With Oral Cavity And Oropharynx., Andrew P. South, Nicoline Y Den Breems, Tony Richa, Uche Nwagu, Tingting Zhan, Shiv Poojan, Ubaldo E. Martinez-Outshoorn, Jennifer M. Johnson, Adam J. Luginbuhl, Joseph Curry

Kimmel Cancer Center Papers, Presentations, and Grand Rounds

Squamous cell carcinomas of the head and neck (HNSCC) arise from mucosal keratinocytes of the upper aero-digestive tract. Despite a common cell of origin and similar driver-gene mutations which divert cell fate from differentiation to proliferation, HNSCC are considered a heterogeneous group of tumors categorized by site of origin within the aero-digestive mucosa, and the presence or absence of HPV infection. Tobacco use is a major driver of carcinogenesis in HNSCC and is a poor prognosticator that has previously been associated with poor immune cell infiltration and higher mutation numbers. Here, we study patterns of mutations in HNSCC that are …

Personal Identity, Psychological Continuity, And Survival, James D. Martin, Dennis Earl

Honors Theses

In this paper, I consider the question of personal identity, namely: in virtue of what is one person the same person at two different points in time? I first raise objections to theories which argue it is in virtue of physical continuity or continuity soul, then argue that an account of psychological continuity is most successful. One might object to psychological continuity on the grounds of reduplication and fusion problems. I argue that strict numerical identity is a bar set too high and rather that survival (construed as the continuation of a first-person perspective) is what matters for personal identity. …

Potential Arm Preference Within Starfish Species Including Asterias Vulgaris And Luidia Clathrata: A Study And Summary, Rebecca Jones, Young Robert

Honors Theses

Foraging arm preference was tested in two species of starfish: Asterias vulgaris and Luidia clathrata. No evidence was found for a species-wide preference or for a preference by individual sea stars, but trials were impacted by illness and resulting low sample size.

Um Professors Collaborate With Counterparts Through Sec Grant, Shea Stewart

University of Mississippi News

Faculty Travel Program encourages, supports conference partnerships

Polyvinyl Alcohol Hydrogels, Payal Hukeri

Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science Independent Study

White matter in the brain is anisotropic, which means it has directionally dependent properties, and has a stiffness of 1-3 KPa. The objective of this project was to create PVA that mimicked these properties well. A hydrogel that mimicked the properties of the brain was to be created and the process had to be easily replicable. Polyvinyl Alcohol is a water soluble synthetic polymer and can be made into a hydrogel. From the DST and Biaxial testing that was completed this semester, as well as the Uniaxial and Rheometry testing completed in previous semesters, the mechanical properties of PVA have …

Using Nano- And Micro- Structural Materials For Concrete Environmental Applications, Hala Nabeel Elia

Theses and Dissertations

Utilized globally in the construction industry, concrete is an integral component of homes, roads, airports, skyscrapers, and tunnels. Traditional concrete components are cement, fine aggregate (sand), coarse aggregate (gravel or crushed stone), and water. When cement and water compound together they will make a paste which binds all the aggregates together to make the concrete. Unfortunately, every one ton of cement manufactured emits 0.9 ton of CO2into the air. The goal of this two-part work was to obtain an environmentally friendly concrete. The first part used supplementary cementitious materials (SCM), fly ash and silica fume, to create concrete with high …

Systems Isomorphisms In Stochastic Dynamic Systems, Rajesh Venkatachalapathy

Dissertations and Theses

The identification of isomorphisms between disparate systems is an important focus of systems science. Such isomorphisms have not only conceptual and pedagogical value to systems science, but they also provide pragmatic value to specific disciplines by suggesting new ways to model familiar phenomena and by serving as reference models that show how even simple models can generate complex behavior. Specifically, this dissertation looks at certain classes of stochastic dynamic systems (SDS) and shows that similar equations can model phenomena in sociology and psychology. In both disciplines, what is modeled by these SDS isomorphisms is a certain type of reliability, defined …

Novel Magnetic Delivery Systems For Platinum Anticancer Drugs, Lamis Alaa Eldin Refaat

Theses and Dissertations

Carboplatin's success in the treatment of major types of cancer has been attributed to its ease of administration and its high therapeutic index. However, despite its superior toxicity profile, myelosuppression remains to be its dose-limiting side effect. Liposomes have been researched extensively as carrier systems for therapeutic agents; their high biocompatibility, their ability to escape the immune system and most importantly their ability to incorporate both hydrophobic and hydrophilic drugs led to numerous liposomal formulations being designed for cancer therapy. Magnetic nanoparticles have been gaining attention as their properties enable them to be used in various therapeutic and diagnostic applications, …

Teaching The Sun As Simile: Bringing Nature Into Language Arts Middle School Classrooms, Stormy Kage

Master of Arts in Professional Writing Capstones

Teaching the Sun as Simile is an essay that explores an interdisciplinary approach to teaching middle school English Language Arts (ELA) by infusing nature and environmental studies. This essay defines emerging concepts of new literacy studies and eco-criticism, literacy, and composition as it relates to ELA pedagogy. Also, it provides an explanation for the importance and relevance of using nature to develop an ecosystem of better readers, writers and communicators in middle school general ed and special ed classrooms.

Electrochemical Hydrogen Evolution Over Hydrothermally Synthesized Re-Doped Mos2 Flower-Like Microspheres, Juan Aliaga, Pablo Vera, Juan Araya, Luis Ballesteros, Julio Urzúa, Mario Farías, Francisco Paraguay-Delgado, Gabriel Alonso-Núñez, Guillermo González, Eglantina Benavente

Faculty, Staff and Students Publications

In this research, we report a simple hydrothermal synthesis to prepare rhenium (Re)- doped MoS2 flower-like microspheres and the tuning of their structural, electronic, and electrocatalytic properties by modulating the insertion of Re. The obtained compounds were characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), high-resolution transmission electron microscopy (HRTEM), Raman spectroscopy, and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS). Structural, morphological, and chemical analyses confirmed the synthesis of poorly crystalline Re-doped MoS2 flower-like microspheres composed of few stacked layers. They exhibit enhanced hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) performance with low overpotential of 210 mV at current density of 10 mA/cm2, with a …

Statistical Analysis Of Social Network Change, Teresa Danielle Schmidt

Dissertations and Theses

This project explores two statistical methods that infer social network structures and statistically test those structures for change over time: regression-based differential network analysis (R-DNA) and information theory-based differential analysis (I-DNA). R-DNA is adapted from bioinformatics and I-DNA employs reconstructability analysis.

This project applies both R-DNA and I-DNA to analyze Medicaid claims data from one-year periods before (May 2011- Apr 2012) and after (Jan 2013-Dec 2013) the formation of the Health Share of Oregon Coordinated Care Organization (CCO). The formation of CCOs was legislated by the state of Oregon in 2012 with the triple aim of improving health outcomes, reducing …

Subglacial Meltwater Supported Aerobic Marine Habitats During Snowball Earth, Maxwell A. Lechte, Malcolm W. Wallace, Ashleig Van Smeerdijk Hooda, Weiqiang Li, Ganqing Jiang, Galen P. Halverson, Dan Asael, Stephanie L. Mccoll, Noah J. Planavsky

Geoscience Faculty Research

The Earth’s most severe ice ages interrupted a crucial interval in eukaryotic evolution with widespread ice coverage during the Cryogenian Period (720 to 635 Ma). Aerobic eukaryotes must have survived the “Snowball Earth” glaciations, requiring the persistence of oxygenated marine habitats, yet evidence for these environments is lacking. We examine iron formations within globally distributed Cryogenian glacial successions to reconstruct the redox state of the synglacial oceans. Iron isotope ratios and cerium anomalies from a range of glaciomarine environments reveal pervasive anoxia in the ice-covered oceans but increasing oxidation with proximity to the ice shelf grounding line. We propose that …

Isolation Of Metrosideros (`Ohi`A) Taxa On O`Ahu Increases With Elevation And Extreme Environments, Elizabeth A. Stacy, Tomoko Sakishima, Heaven Tharp, Neil Snow

Life Sciences Faculty Research

Species radiations should be facilitated by short generation times and limited dispersal among discontinuous populations. Hawaii’s hyper-diverse, landscape-dominant tree, Metrosideros, is unique among the islands’ radiations for its massive populations that occur continuously over space and time within islands, its exceptional capacity for gene flow by both pollen and seed, and its extended life span (ca. >650 years). Metrosideros shows the greatest phenotypic and microsatellite DNA diversity on O`ahu, where taxa occur in tight sympatry or parapatry in mesic and montane wet forest on 2 volcanoes. We document the nonrandom distributions of 12 taxa (including unnamed morphotypes) along elevation gradients, …

Seed‐To‐Seedling Transitions Exhibit Distance‐Dependent Mortality But No Strong Spacing Effects In A Neotropical Forest, Philippe Marchand, Liza S. Comita, S. Joseph Wright, Richard Condit, Stephen P. Hubbell, Noelle G. Beckman

Biology Faculty Publications

Patterns of seed dispersal and seed mortality influence the spatial structure of plant communities and the local coexistence of competing species. Most seeds are dispersed in proximity to the parent tree, where mortality is also expected to be the highest, because of competition with siblings or the attraction of natural enemies. Whereas distance‐dependent mortality in the seed‐to‐seedling transition was often observed in tropical forests, few studies have attempted to estimate the shape of the survival‐distance curves, which determines whether the peak of seedling establishment occurs away from the parent tree (Janzen–Connell pattern) or if the peak attenuates but remains at …

Walking Each Other Home: Sensemaking Of Illness Identity In An Online Metastatic Cancer Community, Ariane B. Anderson

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Increasingly, online settings serve as primary social contexts for patient interaction, playing a crucial role in ways participants access medical information and turn to each other for support. Stage IV (metastatic) cancer patients like myself know what it is like to be overwhelmed by the complex array of medical tests, treatments, and information we are expected to assimilate. My late stage disease status necessitates I routinely grapple with not merely the kinds of support I think I need or how those needs will be met, but also what meanings I assign to my experiences. Consequently, as a member of The …

Sleep Aspects And Sleep Disorders In Children And Adolescents, Sameh Morkous Md, Faan

Department of Pediatrics

No abstract provided.

Comparison Of Reproducibility, Accuracy, Sensitivity, And Specificity Of Mirna Quantification Platforms, Paula M Godoy, Andrea J Barczak, Peter Dehoff, Srimeenakshi Srinivasan, Alton Etheridge, David Galas, Saumya Das, David J Erle, Louise C Laurent

Open Access Publications

Given the increasing interest in their use as disease biomarkers, the establishment of reproducible, accurate, sensitive, and specific platforms for microRNA (miRNA) quantification in biofluids is of high priority. We compare four platforms for these characteristics: small RNA sequencing (RNA-seq), FirePlex, EdgeSeq, and nCounter. For a pool of synthetic miRNAs, coefficients of variation for technical replicates are lower for EdgeSeq (6.9%) and RNA-seq (8.2%) than for FirePlex (22.4%); nCounter replicates are not performed. Receiver operating characteristic analysis for distinguishing present versus absent miRNAs shows small RNA-seq (area under curve 0.99) is superior to EdgeSeq (0.97), nCounter (0.94), and FirePlex (0.81). …

The Aminoalkylindole Bml-190 Negatively Regulates Chitosan Synthesis Via The Cyclic Amp/Protein Kinase A1 Pathway In Cryptococcus Neoformans, Brian T Maybruck, Woei C Lam, Charles A Specht, Ma Xenia G Ilagan, Maureen J Donlin, Jennifer K Lodge

Open Access Publications

No abstract provided.

Single-Nuclei Rna-Seq On Human Retinal Tissue Provides Improved Transcriptome Profiling, Qingnan Liang, Rachayata Dharmat, Leah Owen, Akbar Shakoor, Yumei Li, Sangbae Kim, Albert Vitale, Ivana Kim, Denise Morgan, Shaoheng Liang, Nathaniel Wu, Ken Chen, Margaret M Deangelis, Rui Chen

Faculty, Staff and Students Publications

Single-cell RNA-seq is a powerful tool in decoding the heterogeneity in complex tissues by generating transcriptomic profiles of the individual cell. Here, we report a single-nuclei RNA-seq (snRNA-seq) transcriptomic study on human retinal tissue, which is composed of multiple cell types with distinct functions. Six samples from three healthy donors are profiled and high-quality RNA-seq data is obtained for 5873 single nuclei. All major retinal cell types are observed and marker genes for each cell type are identified. The gene expression of the macular and peripheral retina is compared to each other at cell-type level. Furthermore, our dataset shows an …

Physiological Responses To Music, Shauna Cox

The Downtown Review: An Interdisciplinary Journal Written and Peer-Reviewed by Mandel Honors College Students at Cleveland State University

There are numerous ways that people react physically to music, whether it be by choice (like dancing, swaying, etc.) or something that the body carries out on its own, with no intentional or conscious command. These automatic responses from the body could be as basic as heart-rate or respiration, or as complex as biochemical reactions involving hormones and neurotransmitters. In this essay, I will be focusing on those automatic responses.

Integrating Lidar Data And Multi-Temporal Aerial Imagery To Map Wetland Inundation Dynamics Using Google Earth Engine, Qiusheng Wu, Charles B. Lane, Xuecao Li, Kaiguang Zhao, Yuyu Zhou, Nicholas Clinton, Ben Devries, Heather E. Golden, Megan W. Lang

United States Environmental Protection Agency: Publications

The Prairie Pothole Region of North America is characterized by millions of depressional wetlands, which provide critical habitats for globally significant populations of migratory waterfowl and other wildlife species. Due to their relatively small size and shallow depth, these wetlands are highly sensitive to climate variability and anthropogenic changes, exhibiting inter- and intra-annual inundation dynamics. Moderate-resolution satellite imagery (e.g., Landsat, Sentinel) alone cannot be used to effectively delineate these small depressional wetlands. By integrating fine spatial resolution Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) data and multi-temporal (2009–2017) aerial images, we developed a fully automated approach to delineate wetland inundation extent at …

Fall 2019 Commencement Program, University Of Alabama In Huntsville

Commencement Programs

No abstract provided.

Embryogenic Cell Suspensions For High-Capacity Genetic Transformation And Regeneration Of Switchgrass (Panicum Virgatum L.), Christine A. Ondzighi-Assoume, Jonathan D. Willis, Wilson Kihugu Ouma, Sara M. Allen, Zachary King, Wayne A. Parrott, Wusheng Liu, Jason N. Burris, Scott C. Lenaghan, C. Neal Stewart

Agricultural and Environmental Sciences Faculty Research

Background

Switchgrass (Panicum virgatum L.), a North American prairie grassland species, is a potential lignocellulosic biofuel feedstock owing to its wide adaptability and biomass production. Production and genetic manipulation of switchgrass should be useful to improve its biomass composition and production for bioenergy applications. The goal of this project was to develop a high-throughput stable switchgrass transformation method using Agrobacterium tumefaciens with subsequent plant regeneration.

Results

Regenerable embryogenic cell suspension cultures were established from friable type II callus-derived inflorescences using two genotypes selected from the synthetic switchgrass variety ‘Performer’ tissue culture lines 32 and 605. The cell suspension cultures …

Archeota, Fall 2019, Kelli Roisman, Alyssa Key, Christine Mahoney, E. Ashley Cale, Marissa Friedman, Sabrina Holecko, Greta S. Snyder, Rachel Greggs

Archeota

This is the Fall 2019 issue of Archeota, the official publication of SJSU SAASC.

Archeota is a platform for students to contribute to the archival conversation. It is written BY students, FOR students. It provides substantive content on archival concerns and issues, and promotes career development in the field of archival studies. Archeota upholds the core values of the archival profession. It is a semiannual publication of the Student Chapter of the Society of American Archivists at the San Jose State University School of Information.

Tenure Clock Policy Transparency For Biological Clock (Family Friendly) Events, Michelle Mceacharn, Katherine Boswell, Kriti Chauhan, Sarah O. Siereveld

Administrative Issues Journal

The intention of this study is to investigate the transparency of information on university websites regarding the policies in place related to leave and/or tenure clock extensions for child-related events such as childbirth, adoption, or placement of a foster child. The main purpose is to improve awareness about the policies existing in academia related to these events. The secondary purpose is to determine whether major institutional characteristics affect the family-friendly policies of these institutions. Nearly 80% of the institutions studied communicated some type of information on their website related to tenure clock extension policies. An analysis of the data from …

Admission Assessment: Linking A Standardized Admission Exam To Nursing Program Outcomes, Anita C. Reinhardt, Teresa Keller, Alyce Kolenovsky, Hallie Keller, Pamela Schultz

Administrative Issues Journal

This article reports the results of an academic program evaluation in which standardized admission test scores are compared to intermediate and final program outcomes. We used two intermediate program measures of progress-first semester nursing grades and performance on a standardized exit exam prior to graduation. Program final outcomes compared are student attrition and graduate nurses’ performance on the NCLEX-RN. The analysis resulted in identifying statistically significant relationships between entrance exam scores and first semester grades. Statistically significant relationships were seen between entrance exam scores and performance on a pre-graduation exit exam. There was a statistically significant relationship between entrance exam …

Promoting Health Literacy In Fijian Healthcare And Community Settings, Susan C. Dollar

College of Health and Human Services

No abstract provided.