Digital Commons Network^™

Gotta Catch ‘Em All!: The National Diet’S Inadequate Attempt To Control Manga Pirates, Sydney Landers

University of Miami Law Review

Internet piracy threatens Japan’s most popular cultural exports: manga and anime. Fans have taken to translating and distributing the works online for other fans to enjoy because official translated versions of manga and anime are released overseas later than the original in Japan, or they are never released at all. In order to combat the illegal downloading and distributing of manga, the National Diet, Japan’s legislature, passed an amendment to the Japanese Copyright Act that increases punishments for leech sites and illegal downloading of manga.
This Note discusses the manga and anime industries and their struggles with piracy before reviewing …

Microrna Analysis Of Human Stroke Brain Tissue Resected During Decompressive Craniectomy/Stroke-Ectomy Surgery, Andrew P. Carlson, William Mckay, Jeremy S. Edwards, Radha Swaminathan, Karen S. Santacruz, Ron L. Mims, Howard Yonas, Tamara Roitbak

Pathology Research and Scholarship

BACKGROUND: Signaling pathways mediated by microRNAs (miRNAs) have been identified as one of the mechanisms that regulate stroke progression and recovery. Recent investigations using stroke patient blood and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) demonstrated disease-specific alterations in miRNA expression. In this study, for the first time, we investigated miRNA expression signatures in freshly removed human stroke brain tissue.

METHODS: Human brain samples were obtained during craniectomy and brain tissue resection in severe stroke patients with life-threatening brain swelling. The tissue samples were subjected to histopathological and immunofluorescence microscopy evaluation, next generation miRNA sequencing (NGS), and bioinformatic analysis.

RESULTS: miRNA NGS analysis detected …

Biomarkers For Resistance To Porcine Circovirus 2 Associated Disease, Daniel Constantin Ciobanu, Lianna Rayne Walker, Taylor Benjamin Engle, Hiep Vu

Department of Animal Science: Faculty Publications

The present disclosure provides compositions and methods for increasing resistance to PCV2 infection in pigs. The increased resistance may be the result of siRNA or genetic modification through CRISPR or a vectored virus targeting SNPs that are resistant to PCV2 infection.

Basic Behavioral Processes Involved In Procrastination, Thomas R. Zentall

Psychology Faculty Publications

Procrastination involves an irrational putting off of engaging in a course of action, in spite of expecting to be worse off for the delay. I suggest that to understand the processes underlying procrastination one should examine its relation to several behavioral procedures that have been studied in humans and other animals. For example, in delay discounting, smaller rewards that come sooner are often preferred over larger rewards that come later. In the context of delay discounting, procrastination can be viewed as the preference for an immediate competing activity over the delay to work on a required task. Another process similar …

Drug-Based Therapeutic Strategies For Covid-19-Infected Patients And Their Challenges, Khatereh Zarkesh, Elaheh Entezar-Almahdi, Parisa Ghasemiyeh, Mohsen Akbarian, Marzieh Bahmani, Shahrzad Roudaki, Rahil Fazlinejad, Soliman Mohammadi-Samani, Negar Firouzabadi, Majid Hosseini, Fatemeh Farjadian

Manufacturing & Industrial Engineering Faculty Publications

Emerging epidemic-prone diseases have introduced numerous health and economic challenges in recent years. Given current knowledge of COVID-19, herd immunity through vaccines alone is unlikely. In addition, vaccination of the global population is an ongoing challenge. Besides, the questions regarding the prevalence and the timing of immunization are still under investigation. Therefore, medical treatment remains essential in the management of COVID-19. Herein, recent advances from beginning observations of COVID-19 outbreak to an understanding of the essential factors contributing to the spread and transmission of COVID-19 and its treatment are reviewed. Furthermore, an in-depth discussion on the epidemiological aspects, clinical symptoms …

Competition And Geography Underlie Speciation And Morphological Evolution In Indo-Australasian Monitor Lizards, Carlos J. Pavón-Vázquez, Ian G. Brennan, Alexander Skeels, J. Scott Keogh

Publications and Research

How biotic and abiotic factors act together to shape biological diversity is a major question in evolutionary biology. The recent availability of large datasets and development of new methodological approaches provide new tools to evaluate the predicted effects of ecological interactions and geography on lineage diversification and phenotypic evolution. Here, we use a near complete phylogenomic-scale phylogeny and a comprehensive morphological dataset comprising more than a thousand specimens to assess the role of biotic and abiotic processes in the diversification of monitor lizards (Varanidae). This charismatic group of lizards shows striking variation in species richness among its clades and multiple …

Self-Learned Kernel Low Rank Approach To Accelerated High Resolution 3d Diffusion Mri, Abhijit Baul, Nian Wang, Choyi Zhang, Yuchou Chang, Leslie Ying, Yuchou Chang, Ukash Nakarmi

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

Diffusion Magnetic Resonance Imaging (dMRI) is a promising method to analyze the subtle changes in the tissue structure. However, the lengthy acquisition time is a major limitation in the clinical application of dMRI. Different image acquisition techniques such as parallel imaging, compressed sensing, has shortened the prolonged acquisition time but creating high-resolution 3D dMRI slices still requires a significant amount of time. In this study, we have shown that high resolution 3D dMRI can be reconstructed from the highly undersampled k-space and q-space data using a Kernel Low Rank method. Our proposed method has outperformed the conventional CS methods in …

Stone Monuments Of Northern Lake Eyasi Basin At Olpiro, Oldogom And Olbili Sites In The Ngorongoro Conservation Area, Tanzania: Revisited Perspectives, Musa S. Mwitondi, Pastory Bushozi, Albert S. Mjandwa

Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences

Despite the outstanding contribution of Lake Eyasi Basin to human origins and cultural development from the middle stone age (MSA) to the historic period, other archaeological occurrences in the area with outstanding cultural values such as burial cairns, stone enclosures, megalithic walls, and dolmens have remained less emphatic among scholars. Although these are widespread across the cultural landscape of the region, yet they have attracted little scientific attention. These stone monuments were first reported in the 1960s and 1970s, and precisely correlated to the agricultural terraces of Engaruka, the astonishing late iron age agricultural scheme of northern Tanzania. This study …

Model Fitting And Analysis Of The Cost-Effectiveness Of Control Strategies In The Threatened Wildebeest-Lion Prey-Predator System In The Serengeti Ecosystem, Thadei D. Sagamiko

Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences

In this paper, a wildebeest-lion prey-predator model for the Serengeti ecosystem was adopted from a previous publication. The threats to the model system were poaching, retaliatory killings, and droughts. The proposed threat control strategies for these threats were anti-poaching patrol to mitigate poaching, construction of strong bomas to reduce retaliatory killings, and construction of dams to mitigate the impact of droughts. Data on the lion population density in the Serengeti ecosystem were used to fit the model by using the maximum likelihood method. The impact of different control strategies for a period of five years was analysed using the incremental …

A Study On The Efficacy Of A Naloxone Training Program, Gillian A. Beauchamp Md, Hoonani M. Cuadrado, Seth A. Campbell Pa-C, Bennie Eliason Chw, Chase Jones Do, Aaron Fedor Do, Lauren Grantz Pharmd, Csp, Paige Roth Lsw, Marna Greenberg

Department of Emergency Medicine

Introduction: The use of naloxone to reverse a potentially fatal opioid overdose is a harm reduction strategy that reduces mortality and increases the potential for referral to substance use treatment for affected individuals. In the setting of outreach performed by a street medicine team, we aimed to determine the effectiveness of an educational intervention involving distribution of naloxone accompanied by a brief instructive session about opioids, opioid overdose, and medication administration. Methods: Our street medicine outreach team distributed 200 naloxone kits to clinicians and volunteers involved in caring for patients on ‘street rounds,’ as well as in shelters, soup kitchens, …

Mobile Colorimetric Assay Device, Anna Pyayt, Arsenii Zhdanov, Jordan Keefe, Luis Franco-Waite

USF Patents

A mobile phone-based system for ELISA (MELISA). The MELISA system can perform all steps of ELISA procedure and output hormone concentration values. The system includes a heater that keeps the temperature required for sample incubation, illumination system for sample image capturing, and a digital camera system. All components are enclosed in a dark box to create optimal light conditions for image capturing. After sample images are captured, they are digitally processed, and hormone concentration values are reported based on colorimetric data from the samples. The system can be used to complete all steps of the assay, including incubation and reading. …

Phylogenetic Relationships Of Genera In The Caddisfly Family Limnephilidae Using Anchored Hybrid Enrichment-Based Phylogenomic Analysis (Insecta:Trichoptera), Kyle Charles Rawlinson

Theses and Dissertations

Limnephilidae is a large family within Trichoptera, consisting of 4 subfamilies (Dicosmoecinae, Ecclisomyiinae, Limnephilinae, and Philocascinae), 98 genera, and 1178 species. It is among the most diverse families within Trichoptera. It is also ecologically diverse, occupying more habitats than any other family in the order. There are currently no published generic phylogenies of Limnephilidae based on molecular data. Here we used anchored hybrid enrichment to capture and sequence 922 loci for 57 species taken from what have been considered the full range of genera in the family. We expanded the taxon sampling by adding supplementary species with DNA barcodes, 28S …

Modeling User Relationships In Online Communities Of Creators, Berkeley Andrus

Theses and Dissertations

Those who study creativity, especially from a computational perspective, have long understood the role of social influence in the creative process. This has motivated many efforts to simulate social mechanics in artificial creative systems. However, these simulations have often replicated generic or assumed human behaviors rather than specific anthropological data. In this work we take a more focused approach by quantitatively measuring interactions between creators in online social communities and replicating observed phenomena in a simulated environment. The primary contributions of this thesis are 1) defining quantitative metrics for comparing human and simulated social networks of creators, 2) providing social …

High-Fructose, High-Fat Diet Alters Muscle Composition And Fuel Utilization In A Juvenile Iberian Pig Model Of Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease, Heather C Spooner, Stefani A Derrick, Magdalena Maj, Rodrigo Manjarín, Gabriella V Hernandez, Deepali S Tailor, Parisa S Bastani, Rob K Fanter, Marta L Fiorotto, Douglas G Burrin, Michael R La Frano, Angelos K Sikalidis, Jason M Blank

Children’s Nutrition Research Center Staff Publications

Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) is a serious metabolic condition affecting millions of people worldwide. A “Western-style diet” has been shown to induce pediatric NAFLD with the potential disruption of skeletal muscle composition and metabolism. To determine the in vivo effect of a “Western-style diet” on pediatric skeletal muscle fiber type and fuel utilization, 28 juvenile Iberian pigs were fed either a control diet (CON) or a high-fructose, high-fat diet (HFF), with or without probiotic supplementation, for 10 weeks. The HFF diets increased the total triacylglycerol content of muscle tissue but decreased intramyocellular lipid (IMCL) content and the number of …

Aberrant Crosstalk Between Insulin Signaling And Mtor In Young Down Syndrome Individuals Revealed By Neuronal-Derived Extracellular Vesicles, Marzia Perluigi, Anna Picca, Elita Montanari, Riccardo Calvani, Federico Marini, Roberto Matassa, Antonella Tramutola, Alberto Villani, Giuseppe Familiari, Fabio Di Domenico, D. Allan Butterfield, Kenneth J. Oh, Emanuele Marzetti, Diletta Valentini, Eugenio Barone

Chemistry Faculty Publications

INTRODUCTION: Intellectual disability, accelerated aging, and early-onset Alzheimer-like neurodegeneration are key brain pathological features of Down syndrome (DS). Although growing research aims at the identification of molecular pathways underlying the aging trajectory of DS population, data on infants and adolescents with DS are missing.

METHODS: Neuronal-derived extracellular vesicles (nEVs) were isolated form healthy donors (HDs, n = 17) and DS children (n = 18) from 2 to 17 years of age and nEV content was interrogated for markers of insulin/mTOR pathways.

RESULTS: nEVs isolated from DS children were characterized by a significant increase in pIRS1^Ser636, a marker of …

Identification Of Disease-Linked Hyperactivating Mutations In Ube3a Through Large-Scale Functional Variant Analysis, Kellan P Weston, Xiaoyi Gao, Jinghan Zhao, Kwang-Soo Kim, Susan E Maloney, Jill Gotoff, Sumit Parikh, Yen-Chen Leu, Kuen-Phon Wu, Marwan Shinawi, Joshua P Steimel, Joseph S Harrison, Jason J Yi

Open Access Publications

The mechanisms that underlie the extensive phenotypic diversity in genetic disorders are poorly understood. Here, we develop a large-scale assay to characterize the functional valence (gain or loss-of-function) of missense variants identified in UBE3A, the gene whose loss-of-function causes the neurodevelopmental disorder Angelman syndrome. We identify numerous gain-of-function variants including a hyperactivating Q588E mutation that strikingly increases UBE3A activity above wild-type UBE3A levels. Mice carrying the Q588E mutation exhibit aberrant early-life motor and communication deficits, and individuals possessing hyperactivating UBE3A variants exhibit affected phenotypes that are distinguishable from Angelman syndrome. Additional structure-function analysis reveals that Q588 forms a regulatory site …

A Biocultural Analysis Of The Impacts Of Interactions Between West Africans And Europeans During The Trans-Atlantic Trade At Elmina, Ghana, Heidi Ellen Miller

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This project utilizes a biocultural approach to assess the demographics and health of the West African population from Elmina, Ghana. Elmina, selected by the Portuguese in 1482 as the site of the first European trade fort in sub-Saharan Africa, grew from a small coastal fishing village to a large settlement over the course of more than 400 years of trade and cultural entanglement. Taken over by the Dutch and then ceded to the British, the people of Elmina navigated significant cultural changes, changes and experiences that can be detected in their skeletal remains. Bioarchaeological research concerned with the effects of …

Use Of Karnataka Digital Public Library By The Agriculturists In Mysore Region: A Study, Siddaramu P, Dr. Padmamma, S

Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal)

Public Library is serving as a community information center by providing information to the society, individual and agricultural communities to solve their existing problems. It is the democratic institution which plays a major role in social, economic and cultural development of the various communities by providing information, educational and entertainment facilities. Today, Public libraries are started to upgrade its collections from print form to digital form for reaching new generation. Department of Karnataka Public library initiated Karnataka Digital Public Library Services to fulfill the information needs of the people. Karnataka State has four Region, Mysore, Bangalore, Gulbarga and Belgaum. The …

Supplmentary Feeding And Management Strategies To Overcome Drought Situations On Three High Producing New Zealand Seasonal Dairy Farms, S. H. Benson, P. N. P. Matthews

IGC Proceedings (1977-2023)

This paper investigates the outcomes of the management strategies to overcome dry summer conditions on three New Zealand seasonal supply dairy farms where the summer management philosophy is towards production rather than survival aimed at giving the farmer control rather than accepting the unreliable production outcomes often achieved. Actual data collected from the case farms as part of a large on-farm monitoring programme was used to model the dry 1998/99 season. This was compared with simulated models for an average season to estimate milksolids responses (g milksolids (MS)/kg DM) and net returns (cents/kg DM) to the additional feeds used. In …

A Simulation Model To Evaluate Supplementation Of Tropical Forage Diets For Dairy Cows, A. G. Assis, O. F. Campos, J. Dijkstra, J. France

IGC Proceedings (1977-2023)

A dynamic model of digestion kinetics has been built to evaluate dairy cattle diets based on tropical feeds and to estimate the potential of tropical forages for milk production associated with available supplements. Results of simulation were very consistent showing that grazed elephant grass alone can supply nutrients for cow maintenance and yield of 7.10 kg milk/day. Nevertheless, to produce 25 kg/day on grazed elephant grass, a dairy cow would need to be supplemented with 5.85 kg/day of a mixture of cottonseed meal (50%) plus ground maize (50%), while on maize silage it would be necessary 4.15 kg of the …

Performance Of Beef Heifers Of Various Genetic Groups, Supplemented Or Not, In Coastcross Pastures, Armando De A. Rodrigues, Geraldo M. Da Cruz, Rogério T. Barbosa, Maurício M. De Alencar, Luciano De A. Corrêa, Gilson P. De Oliveira

IGC Proceedings (1977-2023)

The objective of this study was to determine whether the performance of beef heifers of different genetic groups was affected by breed x nutritional environment interactions. Sixty four weaned heifers, 16 per genetic group: ½ Angus + ½ Nellore (AN), ½ Canchim + ½ Nellore (CN), ½ Simmental + ½ Nellore (SN) and pure Nellore (NE), were used with or without 3.0 kg of concentrate.animal^-1 .day^-1 in a fertilized coastcross pasture under rotational grazing system. There were effects of genetic group and supplementation (P< 0.05) on the weight and age at first estrus, but there was no interaction between them. In a rotational grazing system with 4000 kg of available dry matter per hectare with 13% of crude protein, the crossbred AN, supplemented or not, was more precocious (111 days) than Nellore heifers, showing the first estrus at 356 days of age and 324 kg of live weight.

Animal Performance On Brachiaria Brizantha Alone Or Supplemented With Concentrate Or Protein Bank Of Leucaena Leucocephala, Antonio João Lourenço, Paulo Roberto Leme, Marcelo De Queiroz Manella

IGC Proceedings (1977-2023)

The experiment was carried out at the Instituto Zootecnia, Nova Odessa, SP, Brasil, from June/1998 to March/2000 (634 days), and the liveweight gains of Nelore steers was evaluated, per animal and per area, on Brachiaria brizantha alone (T₁), B. brizantha + Leucaena leucocephala (T₂), B. brizantha + supplemental feeding during the dry season (T₃) and B. brizantha + supplemental feeding during the dry and rainy season (T₄). The experimental design was a randomized block, with four replications each one composed by three paddocks rotationally grazed by Nelore steers. Mean weight gain per …

Student Directed One Act Plays, Program

Theatre MSU and Blackfriars

Student Directed One Act Plays

Engaging Students With Disabilities In Universally Designed Science Education, Latifa Sebti, Michelle L. Damiani

Journal of Science Education for Students with Disabilities

Increased student diversity in classrooms and the need for equitable STEM opportunities for all, creates an impetus for educators to establish inclusive and equitable environments and use teaching practices that facilitate meaningful learning for all students in science education. This article offers a three-part framework for combining inclusive philosophy, the science and engineering practices, and Universal Design for Learning. The article is intended to help teachers and teacher educators universally design science education to level the science learning field through access and equity for all students, including students with disabilities. We advocate for the use of four practices: creating an …

Homelessness, Dehumanization, And The Role Of Empathy, Christina Esker

Kean Quest

Dehumanization reflects a psychological process that denies individuals and groups the positive traits and attributes that make them human. Those experiencing homelessness are frequently dehumanized and perceived as social outcasts in American society. This study demonstrates the tendency of others to dehumanize individuals that are homeless and how increased empathy changes how this social outgroup is perceived. Results revealed that when exposed to information that humanizes a man experiencing homelessness, participants’ levels of empathy increased, and levels of disgust decreased. However, general attitudes and beliefs of homelessness were unchanged. The implications of increasing empathy levels for this social outgroup are …

Multi-Modal Transformers Excel At Class-Agnostic Object Detection, Muhammad Maaz, Hanoona Bangalath Rasheed, Salman Hameed Khan, Fahad Shahbaz Khan, Rao Muhammad Anwer, Ming-Hsuan Yang

Computer Vision Faculty Publications

What constitutes an object? This has been a longstanding question in computer vision. Towards this goal, numerous learning-free and learning-based approaches have been developed to score objectness. However, they generally do not scale well across new domains and for unseen objects. In this paper, we advocate that existing methods lack a top-down supervision signal governed by human-understandable semantics. To bridge this gap, we explore recent Multi-modal Vision Transformers (MViT) that have been trained with aligned image-text pairs. Our extensive experiments across various domains and novel objects show the state-of-the-art performance of MViTs to localize generic objects in images. Based on …

Josue Villalobos: Taylor Shaped Me, Taylor University

2021 Website News Stories

No abstract provided.

Coo2 Bhanga Munda Data, Asli Ascioglu, Padma Kadiyala

Finance Department Faculty Journal Articles

No abstract provided.

The Scarlet - November 22, 2021, Scarlet Staff

The Scarlet (Student Newspaper) (2011-present)

The November 22, 2021 edition of The Scarlet (est. 1939), Clark University's student-run newspaper. The Scarlet is intellectually and editorially independent of the University.

Early Land Plants Have Unique Lipid Profile, Deepshila Gautam

3 Minute Thesis Competition

No abstract provided.