Digital Commons Network^™

Serum 25-Hydroxyvitamin D Levels In Children With Mild And Severe Atopic Asthma, Rhoda Ndinda Masaku

Master of Medicine in Paediatrics and Child Health

Background: Asthma is a chronic respiratory illness affecting an estimated 334 million people worldwide, including 14% of the total pediatric population. It results in significant morbidity, and therefore the etiologies and risk factors associated with asthma are of great interest. Serum 25- hydroxyvitamin D (25(OH)D) has substantial immunomodulatory effects on the innate immune system. It reduces the probability of viral respiratory infections and asthma exacerbations by potentiating the anti-inflammatory action of corticosteroids. Objectives: This study was conducted to determine if there was a difference in serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D levels between children with mild and severe atopic asthma and explored the …

Twists In The Use Of Warren Court Fourth Amendment Rhetoric, Susan F. Mandiberg

University of the Pacific Law Review

No abstract provided.

Thermal Atomization Due To Boiling During Droplet Impingement On Superhydrophobic Surfaces, Preston Todd Emerson

Theses and Dissertations

Superhydrophobic (SH) surfaces are characterized by their extraordinary water repellent qualities. When water comes in contact with these surfaces, it beads up and rolls around. This phenomenon is due partially to surface chemistry which promotes weak adhesive forces between liquid and solid. However, micro- and nanoscale surface roughness also plays a crucial role by trapping air beneath the liquid, reducing liquid-solid contact. Many advantages of these surfaces have been identified, including drag reduction and self-cleaning properties, and the body of research regarding them has grown rapidly over the past few decades.This thesis is concerned with water droplets impinging superheated, superhydrophobic …

Louisiana Agriculture Winter, 2020, Lsu Agcenter

Louisiana Agriculture

No abstract provided.

Susceptibility Of Swine Cells And Domestic Pigs To Sars-Cov-2, David A. Meekins, Igor Morozov, Jessie D. Trujillo, Natasha N. Gaudreault, Dashzeveg Bold, Mariano Carossino, Bianca L. Artiaga, Sabarish V. Indran, Taeyong Kwon, Velmurugan Balaraman, Daniel W. Madden, Heinz Feldmann, Jamie Henningson, Wenjun Ma, Udeni B. R. Balasuriya, Juergen A. Richt

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Framework For A Community Health Observing System For The Gulf Of Mexico Region: Preparing For Future Disasters, P Sandifer, L Knapp, M Lichtveld, R Manley, P Sandifer, R Caffey, D Cochran, T Collier, K Ebi, L Engel, J Farrington, M Finucane, C Hale, D Halpern, E Harville, L Hart, Y Hswen, B Kirkpatrick, B Mcewen, G Morris, R Orbach, L Palinkas, M Partyka, D Porter, G Prather, T Rowles, G Scott, T Seeman, H Solo-Gabriele, E Svendsen, T Tincher, J Trtanj, A H. Walker, R Yehuda

Faculty Publications

The Gulf of Mexico (GoM) region is prone to disasters, including recurrent oil spills, hurricanes, floods, industrial accidents, harmful algal blooms, and the current COVID-19 pandemic. The GoM and other regions of the U.S. lack sufficient baseline health information to identify, attribute, mitigate, and facilitate prevention of major health effects of disasters. Developing capacity to assess adverse human health consequences of future disasters requires establishment of a comprehensive, sustained community health observing system, similar to the extensive and well-established environmental observing systems. We propose a system that combines six levels of health data domains, beginning with three existing, national surveys …

Who’S Afraid Of Ebola? Epidemic Fires And Locative Fears In The Information Age, W. Shrum, J. Aggrey, A. Campos, J. Pamplona Da Costa, J. Joseph, P. Kreimer, R. Kroeger, L. Medina, P. Miller, A. Palackal, A. Pandal De La Peza, A. Traore

Faculty Publications

Epidemics have traditionally been viewed as the widespread occurrence of infectious disease within a community, or a sudden increase above what is typical. But modern epidemics are both more and less than the diffusion of viral entities. We argue that epidemics are 'fire objects', using a term coined by Law and Singleton: They generate locative fears through encounters that focus attention on entities that are unknown or imprecisely known, transforming spaces and humans into indeterminate dangers, alternating appearance and absence. The Ebola epidemic of 2014 had more complex impacts than the number of infections would suggest. We employ multi-sited qualitative …

Artificial Intelligence And Covid-19: Deep Learning Approaches For Diagnosis And Treatment, M. B. Jamshidi, A. Lalbakhsh, J. Talla, Z. Peroutka, F. Hadjilooei, P Lalbakhsh, M. Jamshidi, L. La Spada, M. Mirmozafari, M. Dehghani, A. Sabet, Sa. Roshani, So. Roshani, N. Bayat-Makou, B. Mohamadzade, Z. Malek, A. Jamshidi, S. Kiani, H. Hashemi-Dezaki, W. Mohyuddin

Faculty Publications

COVID-19 outbreak has put the whole world in an unprecedented difficult situation bringing life around the world to a frightening halt and claiming thousands of lives. Due to COVID-19 & x2019;s spread in 212 countries and territories and increasing numbers of infected cases and death tolls mounting to 5,212,172 and 334,915 (as of May 22 2020), it remains a real threat to the public health system. This paper renders a response to combat the virus through Artificial Intelligence (AI). Some Deep Learning (DL) methods have been illustrated to reach this goal, including Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs), Extreme Learning Machine (ELM), …

Sars-Cov-2 Infection, Disease And Transmission In Domestic Cats, N N. Gaudreault, J D. Trujillo, M Carossino, D A. Meekins, N N. Gaudreault, D W. Madden, S V. Indran, D Bold, V Balaraman, T Kwon, B L. Artiaga, K Cool, A Garcia-Sastre, W J. Ma, W C. Wilson, J Henningson, U Balasuriya, J A. Richt

Faculty Publications

Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) is the cause of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) and responsible for the current pandemic. Recent SARS-CoV-2 susceptibility studies in cats show that the virus can replicate in these companion animals and transmit to other cats. Here, we present an in-depth study of SARS-CoV-2 infection, disease and transmission in domestic cats. Cats were challenged with SARS-CoV-2 via intranasal and oral routes. One day post challenge (DPC), two sentinel cats were introduced. Animals were monitored for clinical signs, clinicopathological abnormalities and viral shedding. Postmortem examinations were performed at 4, 7 and 21 DPC. Viral RNA …

The Role Of Functional Strategies In Global Plant Distribution, Huixuan Liao, Daijiang Li, Ting Zhou, Bei Huang, Haijie Zhang, Baoming Chen, Shaolin Peng

Faculty Publications

© 2020 The Authors. Ecography published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Nordic Society Oikos Understanding the determinants of species distributions is a central topic in ecology. Competition, stress tolerance and colonization, respectively represented by Grime's competitor (C), stress-tolerator (S) and ruderal (R) schemes, are three important functions that interactively influence plant distributions. In this study, we compiled a dataset of 2645 vascular plant species to explore the roles of the CSR strategies in global plant distribution. We analyzed the associations between the CSR scores and species range size with phylogenetic generalized least square (PGLS) models and …

Female Reproductive State Is Associated With Changes In Distinct Arginine Vasotocin Cell Types In The Preoptic Area Of Astatotilapia Burtoni, Julie M. Butler, Chase M. Anselmo, Karen P. Maruska

Faculty Publications

© 2020 Wiley Periodicals LLC Nonapeptides play a crucial role in mediating reproduction, aggression, and parental care across taxa. In fishes, arginine vasotocin (AVT) expression is related to social and/or reproductive status in most male fishes studied to date, and is linked to territorial defense, paternal care, and courtship. Despite a plethora of studies examining AVT in male fishes, relatively little is known about how AVT expression varies with female reproductive state or its role in female social behaviors. We used multiple methods for examining the AVT system in female African cichlid fish Astatotilapia burtoni, including immunohistochemistry for AVT, in …

Speciation-By-Depth On Coral Reefs: Sympatric Divergence With Gene Flow Or Cryptic Transient Isolation?, Carlos Prada, Michael E. Hellberg

Faculty Publications

© 2020 The Authors. Journal of Evolutionary Biology published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of European Society for Evolutionary Biology The distributions of many sister species in the sea overlap geographically but are partitioned along depth gradients. The genetic changes leading to depth segregation may evolve in geographic isolation as a prerequisite to coexistence or may emerge during primary divergence leading to new species. These alternatives can now be distinguished via the power endowed by the thousands of scorable loci provided by second-generation sequence data. Here, we revisit the case of two depth-segregated, genetically isolated ecotypes of …

The Avr4 Effector Is Involved In Cercosporin Biosynthesis And Likely Affects The Virulence Of Cercospora Cf. Flagellaris On Soybean, Josielle Santos Rezende, Marija Zivanovic, Maria Izabel Costa De Novaes, Zhi Yuan Chen

Faculty Publications

One of the most devastating fungal diseases of soybean in the southern USA is Cercospora leaf blight (CLB), which is caused mainly by Cercospora cf. flagellaris. Recent studies found that the fungal effector AVR4, originally identified in Cladosporium fulvum as a chitin-binding protein, is highly conserved among other Cercospora species. We wanted to determine whether it is present in C. cf. flagellaris and, if so, whether it plays a role in the pathogen infection of soybean. We cloned the Avr4 gene and created C. cf. flagellaris ∆avr4 mutants, which produced little cercosporin and significantly reduced expression of cercosporin biosynthesis genes. …

Impact Report, 2019-2020, Lsu Libraries

Libraries Impact Reports

No abstract provided.

Diverging Landscape Impacts On Macronutrient Status Despite Overlapping Diets In Managed (Apis Mellifera) And Native (Melissodes Desponsa) Bees, Christina L. Mogren, Mariá Soledad Benítez, Kevin Mccarter, Frédéric Boyer, Jonathan G. Lundgren

Faculty Publications

Declining pollinator populations worldwide are attributed to multiple stressors, including the loss of quality forage. Habitat management in agricultural areas often targets honey bees (Apis mellifera L.) specifically, with the assumption that native bees will benefit from an 'umbrella species' strategy. We tested this theory using a conservation physiology approach to compare the effects of landscape composition and floral dietary composition on the physiological status of honey bees and Melissodes desponsa in eastern South Dakota, USA. The total glycogen, lipid and protein concentrations were quantified from field collected bees. Next-generation sequencing of the trnL chloroplast gene from bee guts was …

Lsu General Catalog 2020-2021, Louisiana State University And Agricultural And Mechanical College

LSU General Catalog

The LSU General Catalog describes all undergraduate and graduate departments and programs with degree requirements and courses offered for each one. The LSU General Catalog includes information on registration and financial aid as well as academic services offered to all students.

The Buzz About Bee Campuses: Student Thoughts Regarding Pollinator Conservation, Hannah Penn, Jerrod Penn, Macy Hagan, Wuyang Hu

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Using Community Phylogenetics To Assess Phylogenetic Structure In The Fitzcarrald Region Of Western Amazonia, Jack M. Craig, Tiago P. Carvalho, Prosanta Chakrabarty, Valerie Derouen, Hernán Ortega, Paulo Petry, Roberto E. Reis, Victor A. Tagliacollo, James S. Albert

Faculty Publications

© 2020 The Authors. Di versity and Distributions Published by SBI. Here we explore the use of community phylogenetics as a tool to document patterns of biodiversity in the Fitzcarrald region, a remote area in Southwestern Amazonia. For these analyses, we subdivide the region into basin-wide assemblages encompassing the headwaters of four Amazonian tributaries (Urubamba, Yuruá, Purús and Las Piedras basins), and habitat types: river channels, terra firme (non-floodplain) streams, and floodplain lakes. We present a robust, well-documented collection of fishes from the region including 272 species collected from 132 field sites over 63 field days and four years, comprising …

Extensive Paraphyly In The Typical Owl Family (Strigidae), Jessie F. Salter, Carl H. Oliveros, Peter A. Hosner, Joseph D. Manthey, Mark B. Robbins, Robert G. Moyle, Robb T. Brumfield, Brant C. Faircloth

Faculty Publications

© 2019 American Ornithological Society 2019. Published by Oxford University Press for the American Ornithological Society. The typical owl family (Strigidae) comprises 194 species in 28 genera, 14 of which are monotypic. Relationships within and among genera in the typical owls have been challenging to discern because mitochondrial data have produced equivocal results and because many monotypic genera have been omitted from previous molecular analyses. Here, we collected and analyzed DNA sequences of ultraconserved elements (UCEs) from 43 species of typical owls to produce concatenated and multispecies coalescent-based phylogenetic hypotheses for all but one genus in the typical owl family. …

Interspecific Variation In Hypoxia Tolerance And Hypoxia Acclimation Responses In Killifish From The Family Fundulidae, Brittney G. Borowiec, Ryan D. Hoffman, Chelsea D. Hess, Fernando Galvez, Graham R. Scott

Faculty Publications

© 2020. Published by The Company of Biologists Ltd Hypoxia is a pervasive stressor in aquatic environments, and both phenotypic plasticity and evolutionary adaptation could shape the ability to cope with hypoxia. We investigated evolved variation in hypoxia tolerance and the hypoxia acclimation response across fundulid killifishes that naturally experience different patterns of hypoxia exposure. We compared resting O2 consumption rate (M O2), and various indices of hypoxia tolerance [critical O2 tension (Pcrit), regulation index (RI), O2 tension (PO2) at loss of equilibrium (PLOE) and time to LOE (tLOE) at 0.6 kPa O2] in Fundulus confluentus, Fundulus diaphanus, Fundulus heteroclitus, …

Marine Wild-Capture Fisheries After Nuclear War, K.J.N. Scherrer, C.S. Harrison, R.F. Heneghan, E. Galbraith, C.G. Bardeen, J. Coupe, J. Jägermeyr, N.S. Lovenduski, A. Luna, A. Robock, J. Stevens, S. Stevenson, O.B. Toon, L. Xia

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

2020 Louisiana Summary: Agriculture & Natural Resources, Lsu Agcenter

Louisiana Summary: Agriculture and Natural Resources

This publication tabulates the value of Louisiana agriculture in 2020. Agents and specialists of the Louisiana Cooperative Extension Service, as well as other agencies – both private and public – compiled the data. Their analysis focuses on the animal, forestry, fisheries, plant and wildlife commodities that comprise our vital agricultural industry. Agricultural and natural resource industries contribute significantly to our state’s economy with the potential for increased economic benefits and job creation through value-added processing in urban and rural communities throughout Louisiana.

The food and fiber sector faced a significant number of issues and challenges during the 2020 calendar year. …

Small Ceramide Tames Big P53 Mutant Beast, Ronald A. Hill, Zhijun Liu, Yong Yu Liu

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Emerging Infectious Disease, The Household Built Environment Characteristics, And Urban Planning: Evidence On Avian Influenza In Vietnam, James H. Spencer, Melissa L. Finucane, Jefferson M. Fox, Sumeet Saksena, Nargis Sultana

Faculty Publications

Recent concerns with pandemic outbreaks of human disease and their origins in animal populations have ignited concerns regarding connections between Emerging Infectious Diseases (EID) and development. As disasters, health, and infectious disease become part of planning concern (Matthew & McDonald, 2007), greater focus on household infrastructure and EID disease outbreaks among poultry is warranted. Following Spencer (2013), this study examines the relationship between the mix of household-scale water supplies, sanitation systems, and construction materials, and Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI) among poultry in a developing country: Vietnam. Findings of our multivariate logistic regressions suggest that a non-linear, Kuznets-shaped urban transition …

A Perspective On The Transition To Plant-Based Diets: A Diet Change May Attenuate Climate Change, But Can It Also Attenuate Obesity And Chronic Disease Risk, Faidon Magkos, Inge Tetens, Susanne Gjedsted Bügel, Claus Felby, Simon Rønnow Schacht, James O. Hill, Eric Ravussin, Arne Astrup

Clinical Research Faculty Publications

Current dietary guidelines advocate more plant-based, sustainable diets on the basis of scientific evidence about diet-health relations but also to address environmental concerns. Here, we critically review the effects of plant-based diets on the prevalence of obesity and other health outcomes. Plant-based diets per se have limited efficacy for the prevention and treatment of obesity, but most have beneficial effects in terms of chronic disease risk. However, with the considerable possibilities of translating plant-based diets into various types of dietary patterns, our analysis suggests that potential adverse health effects should also be considered in relation to vulnerable groups of the …

The Environmental Foodprint Of Obesity, Faidon Magkos, Inge Tetens, Susanne Gjedsted Bügel, Claus Felby, Simon Rønnow Schacht, James O. Hill, Eric Ravussin, Arne Astrup

Clinical Research Faculty Publications

Emissions of greenhouse gases (GHG) are linked to global warming and adverse climate changes. Meeting the needs of the increasing number of people on the planet presents a challenge for reducing total GHG burden. A further challenge may be the size of the average person on the planet and the increasing number of people with excess body weight. We used data on GHG emissions from various sources and estimated that obesity is associated with ~20% greater GHG emissions compared with the normal-weight state. On a global scale, obesity contributes to an extra GHG emissions of ~49 megatons per year of …

Prenatal Gestational Diabetes Mellitus Exposure And Accelerated Offspring Dna Methylation Age In Early Childhood, Stephanie Shiau, Leishen Wang, Huikun Liu, Yinan Zheng, Alex Drong, Brian T. Joyce, Jun Wang, Weiqin Li, Junhong Leng, Yun Shen, Ru Gao, Gang Hu, Lifang Hou, Andrea A. Baccarelli

Population and Public Health Science Faculty Publications

Background: We investigated the association between prenatal GDM exposure and offspring DNA methylation (DNAm) age at 3-10 years of age in the Tianjin GDM Observational Study. Methods: This study included 578 GDM and 578 non-GDM mother-child pairs. Children underwent a physical exam that included anthropometric measurements and a blood draw for DNAm analysis (Illumina 850K array) at a median age of 5.9 years (range 3.1-10.2). DNAm age was calculated using two epigenetic clock algorithms (Horvath and Hannum). The residual resulting from regressing DNAm age on chronological age was used as a metric for age acceleration. Results: Chronological age was positively …

Application Of Nanofiltration To Delactosed Permeate To Produce Food Grade Retentate And Permeate Streams, Lee Alexander

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Delactosed permeate (DLP), commonly referred to as mother liquor, is a plentiful byproduct in the dairy industry. It is a direct byproduct of edible lactose manufacture produced in cheese and dairy ingredient facilities. Despite being rich in lactose and minerals, DLP is most commonly relegated to an animal feed product due to its high ash content, it inhibits and disallows crystallization of any remaining lactose. Delactosed permeate showed many inconsistencies from supplier to supplier and within lots from the same supplier in the eight DLP samples obtained from four separate mozzarella and cheddar manufacturing facilities. Nanofiltration (NF) opens potential food …

Development Of A Near Infrared Reflectance Spectroscopy (Nirs) Platform For Rapid Wheat Quality Analysis, Lily Schimke

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Wheat is a valuable cereal grain in terms of its growability, versatility, and multifunctional nutritional components. Research into the genetic characteristics and growing conditions of the grain is advantageous to wheat breeders, farmers, food scientists, food processors, and consumers. Optimizing the quality of the wheat grain is important to yielding a crop with the most desirable traits. Analytically obtaining data on the quality attributes of wheat is a lengthy and resource intensive process. Near infrared reflectance spectroscopy (NIRS) technology is rapid, cost-effective, and a powerful analytical tool that can be harnessed to create predictive calibrations for estimations of wheat parameters. …

Plant Microbial Interactions In Wheat: Fusarium Head Blight And Arbuscular Mycorrhizal Fungi, Yaqoob Rashid Thurston

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Plant microbial interactions consist of the many relationships between plants and microbes which involve studies that observe the biology and molecular genetics of pathological, symbiotic, and associative interactions. Worldwide studies involving these interactions are scarcely available in wheat (Triticum aestivum L.). In South Dakota (SD), wheat research is a major platform used to understand the nature and consequences of these interactions. Specifically, our research efforts here at South Dakota State University (SDSU) concentrate on two different, but valuable, interactions in wheat: the fungal pathogen that causes fusarium head blight (FHB) and the symbiotic interaction of arbuscular mycorrhizae fungi (AMF) with …