Digital Commons Network^™

Analysis Of Geographic Variability Of Fecal Microbiomes Of Fratercula Arctica And Cross-Comparison Of Fecal Microbiomes Of Different Avian Feeding Types, Eric Jose Ramon Martinez

LSU Master's Theses

Gastrointestinal (gut) microbiota have a multitude of effects on their host, from aiding in digestion, to facilitating nutrient uptake, detoxification, and interactions with the immune system. Multiple factors have been identified that influence the composition of vertebrate microbiomes; these include host genetics, environmental conditions, diet and age, sex, and geography. However, broad inferences about wild avian gut microbial diversity and function under natural conditions are limited. Most knowledge on avian microbiomes is derived from studies on domestic poultry. Information on non-model taxa may provide important contextual information about vertebrate host-microbiome interactions and aid in future management of vulnerable species. Here, …

Birth Length Is The Strongest Predictor Of Linear Growth Status And Stunting In The First 2 Years Of Life After A Preconception Maternal Nutrition Intervention: The Children Of The Women First Trial, Nancy F Krebs, K Michael Hambidge, Jamie L Westcott, Ana L Garcés, Lester Figueroa, Antoinette K Tshefu, Adrien L Lokangaka, Shivaprasad S Goudar, Sangappa M Dhaded, Sarah Saleem, Sumera Aziz Ali, Melissa S Bauserman, Richard J Derman, Robert L Goldenberg, Abhik Das, Dhuly Chowdhury

Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology Faculty Papers

BACKGROUND: The multicountry Women First trial demonstrated that nutritional supplementation initiated prior to conception (arm 1) or early pregnancy (arm 2) and continued until delivery resulted in significantly greater length at birth and 6 mo compared with infants in the control arm (arm 3).

OBJECTIVES: We evaluated intervention effects on infants' longitudinal growth trajectory from birth through 24 mo and identified predictors of length status and stunting at 24 mo.

METHODS: Infants' anthropometry was obtained at 6, 12, 18, and 24 mo after the Women First trial (registered at clinicaltrials.gov as NCT01883193), which was conducted in low-resource settings: Democratic Republic …

Improving Recognition And Treatment Of Depression Among Women Using Phq-9 During Office Visits, Victoria Nwokocha, Heather Owens, Chris Webb

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Capstones

Depression can affect productivity and earnings among women, slow down the pace of active participation in social and family life, and increase health costs as well as distract attention from optimal health targets. Depression is the highest source of disability in NYC, with billions of dollars annually in related productivity losses. Although healthcare spending on depression affected patients is largely on hospital admissions, an estimated 40% of affected persons in New York do not get the adequate attention and care needed, with women most often affected by depression. This is an indication that the bedrock of preventive medicine for mental …

Tracking The Source Of Helicobacter Pylori In Watersheds Of San Juan, Puerto Rico, Mary Elizabeth Sailors

Biology Theses

Helicobacter pylori is a pathogenic bacterium that infects more than half of the world’s population. The large number of H. pylori infections in Puerto Rico could be related to the waterborne transmission of the pathogen. While the San Juan Bay Estuary (SJBE) system is home to over three million people, water quality studies in this area of Puerto Rico are lacking. The goal of this study is to determine seasonal and yearly (2020-2021) shifts and relationships between the presence of H. pylori and host-specific (human and dog) Bacteroides in streams that flow through the northern coastal zone of Puerto Rico …

Leafing Through Literature: Late Embryogenesis Abundant Proteins Coming Of Age – Achievements And Perspectives, Itzell E. Hernandez-Sanchez, Israel Maruri Lopez, Coral Martinez-Martinez, Brett Janis, Juan Francisco Jimenez Bremont, Alejandra A. Covarrubias, Michael A. Menze, Steffen P. Graether, Anja Thalhammer

Faculty and Staff Scholarship

To deal with increasingly severe periods of dehydration related to global climate change, it becomes increasingly important to understand the complex strategies many organisms have developed to cope with dehydration and desiccation. While it is undisputed that late embryogenesis abundant (LEA) proteins play a key role in the tolerance of plants and many anhydrobiotic organisms to water limitation, the molecular mechanisms are not well understood. In this review we recap the current knowledge of the physiological roles of LEA proteins and discuss their potential molecular functions. As these are ultimately linked to conformational changes in the presence of binding partners, …

Macrophage Migration Inhibitory Factor (Mif) Makes Complex Contributions To Pain-Related Hyperactivity Of Nociceptors After Spinal Cord Injury, Alexis Bavencoffe, Emily A Spence, Michael Y Zhu, Anibal Garza-Carbajal, Kerry E Chu, Ona E Bloom, Carmen W Dessauer, Edgar T Walters

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Neuropathic pain is a major, inadequately treated challenge for people with spinal cord injury (SCI). While SCI pain mechanisms are often assumed to be in the CNS, rodent studies have revealed mechanistic contributions from primary nociceptors. These neurons become chronically hyperexcitable after SCI, generating ongoing electrical activity that promotes ongoing pain. A major question is whether extrinsic chemical signals help to drive ongoing electrical activity after SCI. People living with SCI exhibit acute and chronic elevation of circulating levels of macrophage migration inhibitory factor (MIF), a cytokine implicated in preclinical pain models. Probable nociceptors isolated from male rats and exposed …

Evolving Deforestation Narratives In Practice: A Study Of The Un-Redd+ Readiness Programme In Nigeria, Stuart Clive Blackwell

Master's Theses

The UN-REDD+ Readiness Programme was conducted between 2009 and 2015. The REDD+ Programme in Nigeria began once the readiness program was completed. This study conducts a document analysis of the program utilizing a political ecology lens to determine the extent to which the program adheres to or strays away from critical narratives surrounding both drivers of deforestation and inclusion and autonomy of federal, state, and local communities. By examining the entirety of the available documentation of the REDD+ Readiness program in Nigeria using a political ecological lens, this study demonstrates both an evolution of the program itself, and an evolution …

Addressing The "Leaky Pipeline": A Review And Categorisation Of Actions To Recruit And Retain Women In Computing Education, Alina Berry, Susan Mckeever, Brenda Murphy, Sarah Jane Delany

Conference papers

Gender imbalance in computing education is a well-known issue around the world. For example, in the UK and Ireland, less than 20% of the student population in computer science, ICT and related disciplines are women. Similar figures are seen in the labour force in the field across the EU. The term "leaky pipeline"; is often used to describe the lack of retention of women before they progress to senior roles. Numerous initiatives have targeted the problem of the leaky pipeline in recent decades. This paper provides a comprehensive review of initiatives related to techniques used to boost recruitment and improve …

Vitamin E Enhances Cancer Immunotherapy By Reinvigorating Dendritic Cells Via Targeting Checkpoint Shp1, Xiangliang Yuan, Yimin Duan, Yi Xiao, Kai Sun, Yutao Qi, Yuan Zhang, Zamal Ahmed, Davide Moiani, Jun Yao, Hongzhong Li, Lin Zhang, Arseniy E Yuzhalin, Ping Li, Chenyu Zhang, Akosua Badu-Nkansah, Yohei Saito, Xianghua Liu, Wen-Ling Kuo, Haoqiang Ying, Shao-Cong Sun, Jenny C Chang, John A Tainer, Dihua Yu

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Despite the popular use of dietary supplements during conventional cancer treatments, their impacts on the efficacies of prevalent immunotherapies, including immune-checkpoint therapy (ICT), are unknown. Surprisingly, our analyses of electronic health records revealed that ICT-treated patients with cancer who took vitamin E (VitE) had significantly improved survival. In mouse models, VitE increased ICT antitumor efficacy, which depended on dendritic cells (DC). VitE entered DCs via the SCARB1 receptor and restored tumor-associated DC functionality by directly binding to and inhibiting protein tyrosine phosphatase SHP1, a DC-intrinsic checkpoint. SHP1 inhibition, genetically or by VitE treatment, enhanced tumor antigen cross-presentation by DCs and …

Synthetic Essentiality Of Tryptophan 2,3-Dioxygenase 2 In Apc-Mutated Colorectal Cancer, Rumi Lee, Jiexi Li, Jun Li, Chang-Jiun Wu, Shan Jiang, Wen-Hao Hsu, Deepavali Chakravarti, Peiwen Chen, Kyle A Labella, Jing Li, Denise J Spring, Di Zhao, Y Alan Wang, Ronald A Depinho

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Inactivation of adenomatous polyposis coli (APC) is common across many cancer types and serves as a critical initiating event in most sporadic colorectal cancers. APC deficiency activates WNT signaling, which remains an elusive target for cancer therapy, prompting us to apply the synthetic essentiality framework to identify druggable vulnerabilities for APC-deficient cancers. Tryptophan 2,3-dioxygenase 2 (TDO2) was identified as a synthetic essential effector of APC-deficient colorectal cancer. Mechanistically, APC deficiency results in the TCF4/β-catenin-mediated upregulation of TDO2 gene transcription. TDO2 in turn activates the Kyn-AhR pathway, which increases glycolysis to drive anabolic cancer cell growth and CXCL5 secretion to recruit …

Tongluo Yishen Decoction Ameliorates Renal Fibrosis Via Nlrp3-Mediated Pyroptosis In Vivo And In Vitro, Qi Jia, Xiaoyu Zhang, Gaimei Hao, Yun Zhao, Scott Lowe, Lin Han, Jianguo Qin

Student Publications

Purpose: In this study, we investigated the mechanism of Tongluo Yishen (TLYS) decoction in more detail, from the perspective of pyroptosis in the unilateral ureteral ligation (UUO) model and the hypoxia-induced renal tubular epithelial (NRK-52E) cell.

Method: The UUO model was used, and after 14 days of TLYS intervention, rats were tested for blood creatinine and urea nitrogen, HE staining was used to observe the pathological changes in the kidney, Masson staining was used to assess the degree of interstitial fibrosis, western blot was used to detect the changes of α-smooth muscle actin (α-SMA) protein expression level, immunohistochemistry and western …

Intra-Seasonal Variation In Feeding Rates And Diel Foraging Behaviour In A Seasonally Fasting Mammal, The Humpback Whale, Ross C. Nichols, David E. Cade, Shirel Kahane-Rapport, Jeremy Goldbogen, Alison Stimpert, Douglas Nowacek, Andrew J. Read, David W. Johnston, Ari Friedlaender

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

Antarctic humpback whales forage in summer, coincident with the seasonal abundance of their primary prey, the Antarctic krill. During the feeding season, humpback whales accumulate energy stores sufficient to fuel their fasting period lasting over six months. Previous animal movement modelling work (using area-restricted search as a proxy) suggests a hyperphagic period late in the feeding season, similar in timing to some terrestrial fasting mammals. However, no direct measures of seasonal foraging behaviour existed to corroborate this hypothesis. We attached high-resolution, motion-sensing biologging tags to 69 humpback whales along the Western Antarctic Peninsula throughout the feeding season from January to …

Consemblex: A Consensus-Based Transcriptome Assembly Approach That Extends Consemble And Improves Transcriptome Assembly, Richard Mwaba

School of Computing: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

An accurate transcriptome is essential to understanding biological systems enabling omics analyses such as gene expression, gene discovery, and gene-regulatory network construction. However, assembling an accurate transcriptome is challenging, especially for organisms without adequate reference genomes or transcriptomes. While several methods for transcriptome assembly with different approaches exist, it is still difficult to establish the most accurate methods. This thesis explores the different transcriptome assembly methods and compares their performances using simulated benchmark transcriptomes with varying complexity. We also introduce ConSemblEX to improve a consensus-based ensemble transcriptome assembler, ConSemble, in three main areas: we provide the ability to use any …

Novel Functions For Arp2/3 Complex-Mediated Actin Networks Discovered In Chlamydomonas Reinhardtii, Brae M. Bigge

Dartmouth College Ph.D Dissertations

Chlamydomonas reinhardtii, a unicellular member of the Chlorophyta or Green Algae phylum, has been used for decades as a model for ciliary studies. Using this tool, previous work from our lab found a role for actin in ciliary assembly and maintenance. However, while the microtubule-based, membrane-ensheathed cilia of Chlamydomonas are highly conserved in relation to mammalian cells, the actin cytoskeleton is not as simple. Chlamydomonas contains two actin genes: IDA5, a conventional actin, and NAP1, a divergent actin. Here, we find that despite the divergence of NAP1, it is still able to interact with the actin nucleator, the Arp2/3 complex. …

The Regulation Of Oxidative Stress In Age-Related Diseases, Jesica Burkhart

Theses and Dissertations

Oxidative stress and mitochondrial dysfunction have been linked to multiple age-related diseases including common neurodegenerative diseases Alzheimer's disease (AD) and Parkinson’s disease (PD). A gene found to regulated oxidative stress and aging is a stress response gene p38 MAPK (p38K). Oxidative stress arises when the over production of reactive oxygen species (ROS) from within the cell or from environmental stimuli outweighs its clearance by antioxidants. This cascade leads to DNA damage, mitochondrial damage, and cell death. Mitochondrial dysfunction and oxidative stress are markers for biological aging. As we age mitochondrial DNA becomes more sensitive to damages and mutations. When the …

Effect Of Various Preterm Infant Milk Formulas On Nec-Like Gut Injury In Mice., Karishma Rao, Alain Cuna, Susana Chavez-Bueno, Heather Menden, Wei Yu, Ishfaq Ahmed, Pugazhendhi Srinivasan, Shahid Umar, Venkatesh Sampath

Manuscripts, Articles, Book Chapters and Other Papers

Formula feeding is an important risk factor for the development of necrotizing enterocolitis in preterm infants. The potential harmful effects of different preterm formulas on the developing intestinal tract remain incompletely understood. Here we demonstrate that feeding newborn mouse pups with various preterm formulas resulted in differing effects on intestinal inflammation, apoptosis, and activation of the pro-inflammatory transcription factor NFκB. 16S rRNA sequencing revealed that each preterm formula resulted in significant gut microbial alterations that were different from dam-fed controls. Formula feeding with EleCare and Similac Special Care caused greater intestinal injury compared to NeoSure. Pre-treatment with Lactobacillus rhamnosus GG …

Comprehensive Short And Long Read Sequencing Analysis For The Gaucher And Parkinson's Disease-Associated Gba Gene., Marco Toffoli, Xiao Chen, Fritz J. Sedlazeck, Chiao Yin Lee, Stephen Mullin, Abigail Higgins, Sofia Koletsi, Monica Emili Garcia-Segura, Esther Sammler, Sonja W. Scholz, Anthony H.V. Schapira, Michael A. Eberle, Christos Proukakis

Peninsula Medical School

GBA variants carriers are at increased risk of Parkinson's disease (PD) and Lewy body dementia (LBD). The presence of pseudogene GBAP1 predisposes to structural variants, complicating genetic analysis. We present two methods to resolve recombinant alleles and other variants in GBA: Gauchian, a tool for short-read, whole-genome sequencing data analysis, and Oxford Nanopore sequencing after PCR enrichment. Both methods were concordant for 42 samples carrying a range of recombinants and GBAP1-related mutations, and Gauchian outperformed the GATK Best Practices pipeline. Applying Gauchian to sequencing of over 10,000 individuals shows that copy number variants (CNVs) spanning GBAP1 are relatively common in …

The Design Of Constructed Salt Marshes Under Deep Uncertainty, John Kucharski, Jennifer Olszewski, Marriah Abellera, Todd Steissberg

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Using nature in engineering design is a long-standing goal of water resource managers. Landscape features like salt marshes serve critical ecological functions in coastal environments delivering important water quality, erosion control and flood inundation benefits. Despite their benefits, natural coastal features like salt marsh have been decimated by development and pollution, leaving much of our coastline unprotected. The diverse benefits of these nature-based features (NBF) make them attractive components of traditional water resource project designs. However, the reality of including these features in engineered designs is complicated by physical and biological uncertainties that limit their use. In this presentation, the …

Using A Multimedia Modeling Approach To Simulate Eutrophication In The Pawcatuck River Estuary, Finnian S. Cashel, Christopher D. Knightes

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

The Pawcatuck River Estuary (PRE), composed of the Pawcatuck River and Little Narragansett Bay (CT/RI, USA), is a coastal plain estuary subject to environmental stress. Anthropogenic nutrient loading, watershed land use changes, and urbanization have contributed to eutrophication, which results in hypoxia and seagrass loss. To understand these processes, a one-dimensional, numerical, process-based model was developed to interpret and predict spatial variations in water quality, using WASP8 (Water Analysis Simulation Program, v 8.32). Our PRE WASP Model included five different sub-modules: Dynamic Wave, or DYNHYD5, was used for hydrodynamics, the heat module for water temperature, the advanced eutrophication module for …

Tapping Into The Potential Of Student Engagement With Universal Design For Learning In Pedagogical Courses, Lin Lin, Krystal A. Barber

Excelsior: Leadership in Teaching and Learning

This paper outlines instructional strategies and course projects that demonstrate multiple means of engagement, representation, action, and expression, the essential principles of the Universal Design for Learning (UDL). The authors first share specific practices and examples related to each of the essential principles of UDL. Next, three projects are presented to demonstrate how these principles, along with technological tools, can be infused into pedagogical courses to prepare preservice elementary teachers in inclusive, online learning environments. This paper explores how teaching strategies and online tools were chosen with purpose, to promote positive learning outcomes and to prepare preservice teachers for the …

What's My Age Again?: Adolescent Development And The Case For Expanding Original Juvenile Court Jurisdiction And Investing In Alternatives For Emerging Adults Involved In Maine's Justice System, Christopher M. Northrop, Jill M. Ward, Jonathan J. Ruterbories, Jess N. Mizzi

Maine Law Review

While many aspects of Maine’s Juvenile Justice system are ripe for reform, this Article advocates for improving the system’s response to one group of offenders often overlooked by policymakers: emerging adults. The Supreme Court, in Roper v. Simmons, stated that “[t]he qualities that distinguish juveniles from adults do not disappear when an individual turns 18.” In fact, studies have shown that criminal conduct attributable to the unstable and impulsive nature of the adolescent mind continues well into a person’s mid-twenties. These eighteen to twenty-five-year-old offenders, termed “emerging adults” by researchers, experience much of the same developmental and physiological challenges as …

Ethno-Nationalism And Asylum Law, Anna R. Welch, Emily L. Gorrivan

Maine Law Review

The myth that asylum laws were once more equitable and humanitarian is belied by the reality of the system’s racist origins. This Essay explains that the U.S. asylum system, like much of the U.S. immigration system, was designed to disadvantage people of color. Indeed, although former President Trump’s reference to Haiti, El Salvador, and African nations as “shithole countries” while advocating for immigration from “countries like Norway” exacerbated systemic challenges, racism has been deeply ingrained in the U.S. asylum system since its inception. Not only do U.S. laws and policies have a disparate impact on black asylum seekers but, when …

Interactions Between Sex And Pet Ownership On Attitudes Toward Children, Aya Dudin, Mayra Linne Almanza-Sepulveda, Katherine T. Cost, Geoffrey B. Hall, Alison S. Fleming, Jonathan Freedman

People and Animals: The International Journal of Research and Practice

Background: Many people are attached to their pets. This attachment shares characteristics with the parental attachment to children. Previous studies have established a sex difference in attitudes about children; women compared to men report more positive attitudes about children. However, whether this sex difference is attenuated by owning and caring for pet(s) has not been investigated. Methods: In a sample of non-parents, we investigated the following: (1) whether the established main effect of sex on attitudes about children was moderated by pet ownership using a 2 (male, female) x 2 (pet owner, non–pet owner) design; and (2) whether the established …

Full-Text Retrievals And Ebsco Discovery Service: Assessing Usage Of E-Journals Across Multiple Platforms, Simon Robins

Roesch Library Faculty Publications

This study utilizes COUNTER 5 data from the University of Dayton (UD) to measure full-text retrievals of e-journal articles from five major academic journal publishers (Taylor & Francis, SAGE, Oxford, Wiley, and Springer). Usage data from these publishers’ e-journals within EBSCO is compared to the same content when accessed from publisher platforms such as Wiley Online Library or SpringerLINK. Building on previous studies that have largely focused on links (or referrals) from the library discovery layer to publisher platforms, this study analyzes usage of full text-articles stored within EBSCO Discovery Service and EBSCOhost subject databases to consider how these full-text …

Psychological Distress Among Asian Indians And Non-Hispanic Whites In The United States, Zasim Azhar Siddiqui, Usha Sambamoorthi

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

Introduction: The prevalence of psychological distress (PD) among Asian Indians is unknown. This study estimated and compared moderate–serious PD in Asian Indians and non-Hispanic Whites (NHWs) in the United States.

Methods: We used a cross-sectional design using the National Health Interview Survey (2012–2017). Adult (age >18 years) NHWs and Asian Indians (N=2,218) were included. PD was measured using the six-item Kessler (K6) scale. We used multivariable logistic regression to determine the association of Asian Indian ethnicity with PD.

Results: In the analysis, 19.9% of NHWs and 11.0% of Asian Indians reported moderate–serious PD. Asian Indians were less likely …

Programmable Rna-Guided Large Dna Transgenesis By Crispr/Cas9 And Site-Specific Integrase Bxb1., Vishnu Hosur, Benjamin E. Low, Michael V. Wiles

Faculty Research 2022

The inability to insert large DNA constructs into the genome efficiently and precisely is a key challenge in genomic engineering. Random transgenesis, which is widely used, lacks precision, and comes with a slew of drawbacks. Lentiviral and adeno-associated viral methods are plagued by, respectively, DNA toxicity and a payload capacity of less than 5 kb. Homology-directed repair (HDR) techniques based on CRISPR-Cas9 can be effective, but only in the 1-5 kb range. In addition, long homology arms-DNA sequences that permit construct insertion-of lengths ranging from 0.5 to 5 kb are required by currently known HDR-based techniques. A potential new method …

Removal And Recovery Of Ammonia From Simulated Wastewater Using Ti3C2TX Mxene In Flow Electrode Capacitive Deionization, Naqsh E. Mansoor, Luis A. Diaz, Christopher E. Shuck, Yury Gogotsi, Tedd E. Lister, David Estrada

Materials Science and Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Flowing electrode capacitive deionization systems (FE-CDI) have recently garnered attention because of their ability to prevent cross contamination and operate in uninterrupted cycles ad infinitum. Typically, FE-CDI electrodes suffer from low conductivity, reducing deionization performance. Utilization of higher mass loadings to combat this leads to poor rheological properties. Herein, Ti₃C₂T_x MXene was introduced as 1 mg mL⁻¹ slurry electrodes in an FE-CDI system for the removal and recovery of ammonia from simulated agricultural wastewater. The electrode performance was evaluated by operating the FE-CDI system with a feed solution of 500 mg L⁻¹ NH …

Ud Faculty, Staff Develop New First-Year Humanities Experience With $100k Grant, Dave Larsen

College of Arts and Sciences Newsroom

UD's mission to educate the whole person is embodied in a new mini-course being developed with a grant from the Social Science Research Council.

First-Of-Its-Kind Undergraduate Cancer Biology Program Graduates First Two Students, Alicia Rohan

Browse All News

No abstract provided.

Stonecutter Science Academy At Gardner-Webb Introduces Students To Careers In Science, Office Of University Communications

Gardner-Webb NewsCenter Archive

Students from 16 schools recently participated in the 2022 Science Academy hosted by Gardner-Webb University and sponsored by the Stonecutter Foundation in Spindale, N.C. They learned about the Department of Natural Sciences at GWU and studied various aspects of science and applications, such as crime scene investigation and forensic anthropology.