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Late Quaternary Voles From Persistence Cave, Black Hills, South Dakota, Christopher N. Jass, Jim I. Mead, Sandra L. Swift

Western North American Naturalist

Excavations at Persistence Cave (Black Hills, SD), produced a large sample of Quaternary microfauna including a diverse assemblage of arvicoline rodents. Identifiable lower first molars (n = 367) include specimens referred to heather vole (Phenacomys sp.), muskrat (Ondatra sp.), southern bog lemming (Synaptomys cooperi), red-backed vole (Myodes sp.), sagebrush vole (Lemmiscus curtatus), prairie vole (Microtus ochrogaster), and a form of meadow vole (Microtus sp.). Direct radiocarbon dating of specimens of Lemmiscus curtatus is consistent with previous records from the Nelson–Wittenberg Site and indicates that sagebrush voles inhabited …

Maternal Prenatal Cortisol Programs The Infant Hypothalamic–Pituitary–Adrenal Axis, Jessica L. Irwin, Amy L. Meyering, Gage Peterson, Laura M. Glynn, Curt A. Sandman, Laurel M. Hicks, Elysia Poggi Davis

Psychology Faculty Articles and Research

One of the key proposed agents of fetal programming is exposure to maternal glucocorticoids. Experimental animal studies provide evidence that prenatal exposure to elevated maternal glucocorticoids has consequences for hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal (HPA) axis functioning in the offspring. There are very few direct tests of maternal glucocorticoids, such as cortisol, during human pregnancy and associations with infant cortisol reactivity. The current study examined the link between maternal prenatal cortisol trajectories and infant cortisol reactivity to the pain of inoculation in a sample of 152 mother-infant (47.4% girls) pairs. The results from the current study provide insight into fetal programming of the infant …

A Noninvasive Genetic Technique Using Guano For Identification Of Corynorhinus Townsendii (Townsend’S Big-Eared Bat) Maternity Roosts, Kelly E. Williams, Richard E. Sherwin, Kaci K. Vandalen, Antoinette J. Piaggio

Western North American Naturalist

The use of DNA from fecal samples can allow for a better understanding of the ecology of a species without capturing and handling the animals. This is particularly useful for cryptic and elusive animals, such as bats. Being able to identify critical habitat, such as maternity roosts, for bat species in areas where they depend on abandoned mines that could be slated for closure is necessary to enact appropriate protections for such roosts. In particular, Corynorhinus townsendii commonly uses abandoned mines for maternity roosts. Further, maternity roosts are difficult to identify through visual surveys when only one or a few …

Autoregulation Of Yeast Ribosomal Proteins Discovered By Efficient Search For Feedback Regulation, Basab Roy, David Granas, Fredrick Bragg Jr, Jonathan A Y Cher, Michael A White, Gary D Stormo

Open Access Publications

Post-transcriptional autoregulation of gene expression is common in bacteria but many fewer examples are known in eukaryotes. We used the yeast collection of genes fused to GFP as a rapid screen for examples of feedback regulation in ribosomal proteins by overexpressing a non-regulatable version of a gene and observing the effects on the expression of the GFP-fused version. We tested 95 ribosomal protein genes and found a wide continuum of effects, with 30% showing at least a 3-fold reduction in expression. Two genes, RPS22B and RPL1B, showed over a 10-fold repression. In both cases the cis-regulatory segment resides in the …

Sustainable Stocking Strategies Are Profitable In Managing For Climate Variability In A North Australian Savanna, Peter O’Reagain, John Bushell

IGC Proceedings (1977-2023)

No abstract provided.

Relationship Between Pre‐Wilting And In Vitro Digestibility Of Organic Matter, W. Opitz Von Boberfeld

IGC Proceedings (1977-2023)

No abstract provided.

Live Weight Gain Of Beef Cattle Steers On Panicum Maximum Cv. Tanzania Subjected To Intensities Of Rotational Grazing, Domicio Nascimento Jr., G. S. Difante, Valéria P. B. Euclides, Sila C. Da Silva, R. A. Torres

IGC Proceedings (1977-2023)

No abstract provided.

How Does Child Maltreatment Impact Social Emotional Development In Children Under Five?, Jazmine Fennig

Graduate Teacher Education

Research examined in this paper found that children under the age of five years old who are victims of child maltreatment, can display hindered development in social emotional behavioral domains. Being that the brain develops so rapidly and is fragile during this age, there is a plethora of developmental, mental struggles, personal struggles, and complications that children can face during the remaining years of childhood, adolescence, and adulthood as a result (Campbell, Walker, & Egede, 2016; Kahr Nilsson, Landorph, Houmann, Olsen & Skovgaard, 2019; & McKelvey, Edge, Mesman, Whiteside-Mansell & Bradley, 2018). Effects can range from short term to long …

Altered Toxin Binding Or Access To The Binding Site, What Changes In The Tetrodotoxin Resistant Sodium Channels Of Garter Snakes?, Kenyon Mitchell

Fall Student Research Symposium 2020

Voltage-gated sodium ion channels are required for the generation and propagation of action potentials in vertebrate nerve and muscle cells. The neurotoxin tetrodotoxin (TTX) binds in the channel pore and blocks sodium channel function. Some populations of garter snakes (Thamnophis sirtalis) have evolved resistance to TTX in part due to amino acid substitutions in the pore of the voltage-gated sodium channel expressed in skeletal muscle fibers (tsNaV1.4). We have previously demonstrated that the four amino acid substitutions in tsNaV1.4 from snake populations in California reduce TTX binding. These four amino acid substitutions are at or near an amino acid position …

Functional Complementation Of The Ppgcn4 And Ppnhx2 Genes In Arabidopsis Thaliana To Study Salt Tolerance, Amanda Moravek

Fall Student Research Symposium 2020

Climate change induces unexpected weather and causes abiotic and biotic stresses in plants. These stresses negatively affect crop growth and production. Additionally, a steady increase in the world population has been leading to higher food demand. Therefore, the development of more stress-resilient crops is essential to combat these problems. One such stress is a salinity that affects crop production. Almond is a salt-sensitive crop, so there is a need to identify salt-tolerant almond rootstocks. AtGCN4 is a novel gene that was identified in Arabidopsis thaliana to play a significant role in host-pathogen interaction and drought tolerance when overexpressed. The preliminary …

Vol.48 N.21 December 10th 2020, Voice Media Ventures

Black Voice News

No abstract provided.

Wmu Board Of Trustees Formal Session December 10, 2020, Wmu Board Of Trustees

WMU Board of Trustees Meetings

Acceptance of the Agenda – Bolger
Approval of the Minutes (November 5, 2020 Meeting) – Bolger
Remarks by the Chair – Bolger
Remarks by the President – Montgomery
Comments by the Faculty Senate President – Kritzman
Comments by the Western Student Association President – West
Comments by the Graduate Student Association President – Morris
Presentation – Student Athlete Achievement – Beauregard, Harrison, and Caliendo
Annual Presidential Assessment – Rinvelt
Outgoing Trustee Appreciation for Behen and Bolger – Schuemann
Public Comments Regarding Action Items – Schuemann

Action Items – Bolger

• Sexual and Gender-Based Misconduct Policy – Crawford
• Trustee Emeritus Recognition for …

The Impact Of Biological Components On A Dog's Personality, Kinsley Batson

Fall Student Research Symposium 2020

We interact with dogs every day, and they are often referred to as "man's best friend." But what makes a dog the happy-go-lucky, cuddly fur ball of happiness that so many love? Similar to humans, there is a nature vs. nurture debate on what shapes a dog's personality. While it is likely a mixture of both, I've researched a variety of biological components that help to make a dog a dog. Some of these include face shape, how their brain responds to audio stimuli, and a specific gene, also found in children with Williams syndrome, that is thought to make …

The Role Of Dogs In Ancient Mesopotamia, Hannah Chester

Fall Student Research Symposium 2020

This research summarizes the role of dogs in ancient Mesopotamian society, with an emphasis on the religious aspect of dogs in regards to the goddess Gula.

Isolation Of Halotolerant Bacteria From The Rhizosphere Of Ceanothus Velutinus May Lead To Contributions In Plant Health In Saline Conditions, Jacob Davis

Fall Student Research Symposium 2020

The recent rise in the average global temperature has been a driving force over the past few years for rising soil salinity. This presents an especially hostile environment to many plant species that may not have previously been exposed to these conditions. The rhizosphere, which is a layer of soil attached to the roots of a plant, contains microorganisms that contribute to the plants' abiotic and biotic stress resistance. These microorganisms are known as Plant Growth Promoting Rhizobacteria (PGPR). These can play a key role in contributing to plant stress resistance. Some native plants have shown a strong ability to …

Furries: The Emergence Of The Modern-Day Anthropomorphism Culture, Nate Bee

Fall Student Research Symposium 2020

A brief contextualization of what a furry is, and potential origins/explanations for the emergence of the modern-day furry.

The Effects Of Estrogen And Arousal On Latent Inhibition, Michael Herron

Fall Student Research Symposium 2020

The behaviors of humans and animals are dependent on neurotransmitters and hormones that affect attention, alertness, and associative learning. These include the hormone estrogen (which plays an interesting role in cognition and attentional processes) and the neurotransmitter orexin (involved in wakefulness, arousal and goal-directed behaviors). Here we evaluated the roles of orexin receptors and estrogen in Latent Inhibition (LI), a measure of attention and associative learning. Latent inhibition is a behavioral phenomenon in which an organism's ability to associate new meaning to a familiar previously inconsequential (pre-exposed) stimulus is reduced when compared to associating meaning to a novel stimulus (non …

Examining Ages Of Birds That Have Fatally Collided With Windows At Usu's C&Ss Building, Brigham City, Ut, Taylor Kenyon

Fall Student Research Symposium 2020

Around 97.6-975.6 million birds fatally collide with windows each year in North America. Bird age could be a contributor to the collisions. The central focus of our research project is to determine if there is a statistically significant relationship between the age of an individual bird and the likelihood of a fatal collision with a human-made window. The data collection method that will be used for this project is a hybrid of primary and secondary research. Personally collected data regarding window collisions, will be obtained from daily surveys of the Classroom and Student Services (CSS) Building at the Utah State …

Analyzing Fatal Bird-Window Collisions Occurring On Usu's C&Ss Building, Brigham City, Utah, Jacob Larkin

Fall Student Research Symposium 2020

Fatal bird window collisions are often overlooked as minimally damaging to bird populations or viewed as inevitable collateral damage of human habitat expansion. In reality, these unnecessary collisions are truly monumental in number, and prove to be a serious threat to bird populations, especially endangered bird species. In the United States alone it is estimated that between 365 - 988 million birds fatally collide with man-made windows annually. We are focusing our study on fatal bird-window collisions occurring on the Classroom and Student Services Building (C&SS building) at the USU campus in Brigham City, UT 84302. We have selected this …

"Botley, You Need To Listen!" Exploring Young Children's Interactions With Robots While Learning To Code, Selendra Lewis, Rebecca Peterson, Kathleen Bullock

Fall Student Research Symposium 2020

Recently, there's been a surge of research about child-robot interactions as robots are being used in classrooms and homes in increasing numbers. Many of these studies are conducted in a laboratory-like setting followed by a survey. This project is unique in that we primarily rely on observational data in classrooms where students are using robots to learn math and Computational Thinking skills including Spatial Reasoning, Algorithmic Thinking, Debugging, and Decomposition. While the main purpose of the larger project is to develop curriculum and assessments for these skills, the structure of the FSRS project proposal allows us to also analyze these …

Bird-Window Collision Mitigation At Usu's C&Ss Building, Brigham City, Utah, Hunter Martin

Fall Student Research Symposium 2020

Bird-window collisions are often not thought about as if they are a major problem to bird populations worldwide. This is not the case as bird populations are threatened by these collisions. In the United States alone it is estimated that 97.6 - 975.6 million birds fatally collide with human-made windows annually, and another 16 to 42 million collide in Canada per year. Our focus is to investigate a possible window collision problem and explore different mitigation efforts to prevent these collisions at the USU-Brigham City campus (Brigham City, Utah, 84302). We hope to determine how many fatal bird-window collisions are …

Cytokine Indicators Of Inflammation In Mice Fed A Western Type Diet, Emily Mortensen

Fall Student Research Symposium 2020

Colorectal cancer is currently the second leading cause of cancer-related deaths in the United States and is projected to cause 53,200 deaths during 2020. The risk of colon cancer increases by 8-20% in individuals who suffer from colitis, which is inflammation of the colon lining. Colitis is common in patients with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), including Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis. The development of colorectal cancer is complex and can be associated with dysbiosis of the gut microbiota, which has been shown to be affected by diet. Disruption of the gut microbiome can lead to the overgrowth of pathogenic bacteria …

The Importance Of Experiment Replication In Understanding Distribution Of 'Alalā Seed Retention Time, Camilla Moses

Fall Student Research Symposium 2020

Hawaiian forests have suffered damages from climate change, introduced plants, and introduced animals that trample or graze on the native vegetation. The 'Alalā, a native Hawaiian bird that is being reintroduced from captivity, is a disperser of native plants and can facilitate the restoration of native vegetation in Hawaiian forests. If the seed retention time and the flight paths of the 'Alalā are known, we can estimate the distribution of the seeds they disperse and see the effect the species has on forest restoration. In this study, the seed retention time of the 'Alalā is predicted from body mass using …

Identification And Characterization Of Pd-L1 In Bovine Placentas, Andre Nguyen

Fall Student Research Symposium 2020

Successful bovine pregnancy requires that the maternal immune system modulate T lymphocytes. Program death-ligand 1 (PD-L1) is an inhibitory protein that is associated with immune tolerance and modulation of T cells. Previous studies have linked PD-L1 to suppressing T cell activity and modulating cytokine production, therefore, inducing maternal tolerance and acceptance of the fetus. PD-L1 may be a possible mechanism involved in establishing successful bovine pregnancies. To this day, no evidence of PD-L1 RNA or protein was found in bovine placentas. We hypothesize that PD-L1 is present in the bovine placenta and its expression differs between trimesters. To analyze the …

Dogs In Ancient Egypt, Ella Olson

Fall Student Research Symposium 2020

The Ancient Egyptians are infamous for their love of cats, but what about dogs? It turns out that dogs were equally loved and praised in Egyptian culture. A large part of this comes from the religious significance of dogs- they are connected to the afterlife through Anubis, the god of the dead, and were thought to act as companions and guides to humans in the afterlife. Anubis is an interesting god to look at because he's one of the oldest and most respected gods. In today's terms, we refer to him as having a jackal head, but the Egyptians considered …

Synthesizing Octahedral Polyomavirus Capsids For Cryogenic Electron Microscopy, Miles Robertson

Fall Student Research Symposium 2020

Polyomavirus capsids are polymorphic under different chemical conditions. These capsids have been synthesized artificially using purified VP1, the primary building block of the capsid. Five VP1 proteins come together and form a highly stable structure called a pentamer, and these pentamers can form capsids (Figure 1). Depending on chemical conditions, the capsids can form three distinct sizes: T=7, octahedral and icosahedral (Figure 2). Only one form is found in infectious virions, and its structure has been well studied. However, no high-resolution structure of the octahedral capsid currently exists. The goal of this research is to solve the structure of the …

Enabling Mars Farms Through Microbial Remediation Of Wastewater, Tyler Wallentine

Fall Student Research Symposium 2020

This research evaluates the capacity of photoheterotrophic purple non-sulfur bacteria to utilize wastewater organics to grow and produce nitrogen-rich biomass. Inhibitory components of wastewater are determined. A scaled up production system is designed and utilized to culture bacteria in wastewater. The application of this technology in the production of agriculturally viable amounts of nitrogen-rich biomass is evaluated in the context of a Mars mission and enabling agriculture in a barren environment.

Distributed De Novo Assembler For Large-Scale Long-Read Datasets, Sayan Goswami, Kisung Lee, Seung Jong Park

Computer Science Faculty Research & Creative Works

Third-generation DNA sequencing technologies such as single-molecule real-time sequencing (SMRT) and nanopore sequencing have the potential to fill the gaps in the existing genome databases since the raw sequences produced by these machines are much longer than those of previous generations and therefore result in more contiguous assemblies. However, these long reads have a high error rate, which makes the assembly process computationally challenging. Moreover, since existing long-read assemblers are designed to run on a single machine, they either take days to complete or run out of memory on even moderate-sized datasets. In this paper, we present a distributed long-read …

Pathway‐Extended Gene Expression Signatures Integrate Novel Biomarkers That Improve Predictions Of Patient Responses To Kinase Inhibitors, Ashis Bagchee‐Clark, Eliseos J. Mucaki, Tyson Whitehead, Peter Rogan

Biochemistry Publications

Cancer chemotherapy responses have been related to multiple pharmacogenetic biomarkers, often for the same drug. This study utilizes machine learning to derive multi‐gene expression signatures that predict individual patient responses to specific tyrosine kinase inhibitors, including erlotinib, gefitinib, sorafenib, sunitinib, lapatinib and imatinib. Support vector machine (SVM) learning was used to train mathematical models that distinguished sensitivity from resistance to these drugs using a novel systems biology‐based approach. This began with expression of genes previously implicated in specific drug responses, then expanded to evaluate genes whose products were related through biochemical pathways and interactions. Optimal pathway‐extended SVMs predicted responses in …

Top 30 Full Text Downloads By Series For Fy 2020 (7/1/19‐06/30/20) Digitalcommons@University Of Nebraska‐Lincoln, Paul Royster

Institutional Repository Information

Top 30 downloaded series, UNL Digital Commons FY 2020 (7/1/19—6/30/20)

Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal) • Historical Materials from University of Nebraska-Lincoln Extension • Robert Katz Publications • Nebraska Law Review • Nebraska Tractor Tests • Management Department Faculty Publications • Publications from USDA-ARS / UNL Faculty • Faculty Publications, Department of Psychology • USDA National Wildlife Research Center - Staff Publications • Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings • Educational Administration: Theses, Dissertations, and Student Research • Electronic Texts in American Studies • Great Plains Quarterly • Public Access Theses, Dissertations, and Student Research from the College of Education …