Digital Commons Network^™

Determinants Of Population Genetic Structure In Chamaecrista Fasciculata (Michx.) Greene (Fabaceae) In The Southeastern United States, Mahboubeh Hosseinalizadeh Nobarinezhad, Lisa E. Wallace

Biological Sciences Faculty Publications

Chamaecrista fasciculata is a widely distributed, phenotypically variable species in the eastern U.S. Whereas studies have demonstrated genetic structure and local adaptation in northern areas of its distribution, there has been no comparison of genetic variability among populations at the southern extent where phenotypic variation is more complex. We characterized genetic variation at 14 microsatellite loci for populations in Mississippi and Alabama and compared this to variation in a phenotypic trait, leaf pubescence. Geographic distance, climatic variables, and elevation were evaluated as factors to explain the observed patterns of genetic diversity. A significant amount of variation (19%) resided among populations, …

Bone Morphogenetic Proteins Shape TReg Cells, Piotr Kraj

Biological Sciences Faculty Publications

The transforming growth factor-β (TGF-β) family includes cytokines controlling cell behavior, differentiation and homeostasis of various tissues including components of the immune system. Despite well recognized importance of TGF-β in controlling T cell functions, the immunomodulatory roles of many other members of the TGF-β cytokine family, especially bone morphogenetic proteins (BMPs), start to emerge. Bone Morphogenic Protein Receptor 1α (BMPR1α) is upregulated by activated effector and Foxp3+ regulatory CD4+ T cells (Treg cells) and modulates functions of both of these cell types. BMPR1α inhibits generation of proinflammatory Th17 cells and sustains peripheral Treg cells. This finding underscores the importance of …

Mismatches In Scale Between Highly Mobile Marine Megafauna And Marine Protected Areas, Melinda G. Conners, Nicholas B. Sisson, Pierre D. Agamboue, Philip W. Atkinson, Alastair M.M. Baylis, Scott R. Benson, Barbara A. Block, Steven J. Bograd, Pablo Bordino, W. D. Bowen, Paul Brickle, Ignacio M. Bruno, Victoria González Carman, Cory D. Champagne, Daniel E. Crocker, Daniel P. Costa, Tiffany M. Dawson, Tomohiro Deguchi, Heidi Dewar, Philip D. Doherty, Tomo Eguchi, Angela Formia, Brendan J. Godley, Rachel T. Graham, Christian Gredzens, Kristen M. Hart, Lucy A. Hawkes, Suzanne Henderson, Robert William Henry Iii, Luis A. Hückstädt, Ladd M. Irvine, Sarah S. Kienle, Carey E. Kuhn, Damian Lidgard, Stephanie A. Loredo, Bruce R. Mate, Kristian Metcalfe, Jacob Nzegoue, Carmen K. Kouerey Oliwina, Rachel A. Orben, Kiyoaki Ozaki, Richard Parnell, Elizabeth P. Pike, Patrick W. Robinson, Howard C. Rosenbaum, Fumio Sato, Scott A. Shaffer, Donna J. Shaver, Samantha E. Simmons, Brian J. Smith, Guy-Philippe Sounguet, Robert M. Suryan, David R. Thompson, Megan Tierney, Dominic Tilley, Hillary S. Young, Victoria Warwick-Evans, Michael J. Weise, Randall S. Wells, Bradley P. Wilkinson, Matthew J. Witt, Sarah M. Maxwell

Biological Sciences Faculty Publications

Marine protected areas (MPAs), particularly large MPAs, are increasing in number and size around the globe in part to facilitate the conservation of marine megafauna under the assumption that large-scale MPAs better align with vagile life histories; however, this alignment is not well established. Using a global tracking dataset from 36 species across five taxa, chosen to reflect the span of home range size in highly mobile marine megafauna, we show most MPAs are too small to encompass complete home ranges of most species. Based on size alone, 40% of existing MPAs could encompass the home ranges of the smallest …

Mechanism For Selective Binding Of Aromatic Compounds On Oxygen-Rich Graphene Nanosheets Based On Molecule Size/Polarity Matching, Heyun Fu, Bingyu Wang, Dongqiang Zhu, Zhicheng Zhou, Shidong Bao, Xiaolei Qu, Yong Guo, Lan Ling, Shourong Zheng, Pu Duan, Jingdong Mao, Klaus Schmidt-Rohr, Shu Tao, Pedro J.J. Alvarez

Chemistry & Biochemistry Faculty Publications

Selective binding of organic compounds is the cornerstone of many important industrial and pharmaceutical applications. Here, we achieved highly selective binding of aromatic compounds in aqueous solution and gas phase by oxygen-enriched graphene oxide (GO) nanosheets via a previously unknown mechanism based on size matching and polarity matching. Oxygen-containing functional groups (predominately epoxies and hydroxyls) on the nongraphitized aliphatic carbons of the basal plane of GO formed highly polar regions that encompass graphitic regions slightly larger than the benzene ring. This facilitated size match–based interactions between small apolar compounds and the isolated aromatic region of GO, resulting in high binding …

Integrating Deep Learning And Hydrodynamic Modeling To Improve The Great Lakes Forecast, Pengfei Xue, Aditya Wagh, Gangfeng Ma, Yilin Wang, Yongchao Yang, Tao Liu, Chenfu Huang

Civil & Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications

The Laurentian Great Lakes, one of the world’s largest surface freshwater systems, pose a modeling challenge in seasonal forecast and climate projection. While physics-based hydrodynamic modeling is a fundamental approach, improving the forecast accuracy remains critical. In recent years, machine learning (ML) has quickly emerged in geoscience applications, but its application to the Great Lakes hydrodynamic prediction is still in its early stages. This work is the first one to explore a deep learning approach to predicting spatiotemporal distributions of the lake surface temperature (LST) in the Great Lakes. Our study shows that the Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) neural network, …

Analysis Of Race And Sex Bias In The Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule (Ados-2), Luther G. Kalb, Vini Singh, Ji Su Hong, Calliope Holingue, Natasha N. Ludwig, Danika Pfeiffer, Rachel Reetzke, Alden L. Gross, Rebecca Landa

Communication Disorders & Special Education Faculty Publications

Importance: There are long-standing disparities in the prevalence of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) across race and sex. Surprisingly, few studies have examined whether these disparities arise partially out of systematic biases in the Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule, Second Edition (ADOS-2), the reference standard measure of ASD.

Objective: To examine differential item functioning (DIF) of ADOS-2 items across sex and race.

Design, Setting, and Participants: This is a cross-sectional study of children who were evaluated for ASD between 2014 and 2020 at a specialty outpatient clinic located in the Mid-Atlantic region of the US. Data were analyzed from July 2021 to …

Influence Of Abiotic Drivers On 1-Year Seedling Survival Of Six Mangrove Species In Southeast Asia, Taylor M. Sloey, Kiah Eng Lim, Jared Moore, Jie Min Heng, Jia Min Heng, Michiel Van Breugel

Biological Sciences Faculty Publications

Establishment and survival of plant species in systems with dominant environmental drivers (i.e. factors that exert disproportionate control over species establishment and survival) is often thought to be dominated by one master variable. In forested wetlands such as mangroves, hydrology is typically considered the dominant limiting driver. At the same time, light is a major driver of plant community dynamics, with some of the best understood plant life-history tradeoffs related to fast growth under high-light conditions versus survival under low-light conditions. Yet light is given relatively limited consideration in mangrove research compared to other drivers. Understanding the relative importance of …

Unified Methods In Collecting, Preserving, And Archiving Coral Bleaching And Restoration Specimens To Increase Sample Utility And Interdisciplinary Collaboration, Rebecca Vega Thurber, Emily R. Schmeltzer, Andréa G. Grottoli, Robert Van Woesik, Robert J. Toonen, Mark Warner, Kerri L. Dobson, Rowan H. Mclachlan, Katie Barott, Daniel J. Barshis, Justin Baumann, Leila Chapron, David J. Combosch, Adrienne M.S. Correa, Thomas M. Decarlo, Mary Hagedorn, Laetitia Hédouin, Kenneth Hoadley, Thomas Felis, Christine Ferrier-Pagès, Carly Kenkel, Ilsa B. Kuffner, Jennifer Matthews, Mónica Medina, Christopher Meyer, Corinna Oster, James Price, Hollie M. Putnam, Yvonne Sawall

Biological Sciences Faculty Publications

Coral reefs are declining worldwide primarily because of bleaching and subsequent mortality resulting from thermal stress. Currently, extensive efforts to engage in more holistic research and restoration endeavors have considerably expanded the techniques applied to examine coral samples. Despite such advances, coral bleaching and restoration studies are often conducted within a specific disciplinary focus, where specimens are collected, preserved, and archived in ways that are not always conducive to further downstream analyses by specialists in other disciplines. This approach may prevent the full utilization of unexpended specimens, leading to siloed research, duplicative efforts, unnecessary loss of additional corals to research …

Population Dynamics And Seasonal Movements Of Blue Suckers (Cycleptus Elongatus) In The James River, South Dakota, Tanner Leigh Carlson

Dissertations and Theses

Blue Suckers are a declining long lived catostomid, native to the large rivers and tributaries of the central United States. Currently in decline throughout their range due to anthropogenic impacts such as river channelization and dam construction, there are few stable Blue Sucker populations remaining. This study sought to describe population demographics of a stable population of Blue Suckers located in the unchannelized reach of the Missouri River below Gavins Point Dam. Year class strength, growth, and natural mortality was estimated based on aging data collected from lapillus otoliths. Previous research was conflicting as to what aging structure, pectoral fin …

Teachers' Perceptions Of Positive Behavior Intervention Supports And Student Safety Perceptions, Renee Elizabeth Anderson

Dissertations and Theses

The purpose of the study was to investigate the relationship between how thoroughly School-wide Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (SW-PBIS) is implemented in elementary classrooms, junior kindergarten through fifth grade, and students’ and teachers’ perceptions of safety. An additional purpose was to investigate whether child knowledge of conflict resolution has a relationship with the perceptions of feeling safe. The following questions were explored: (1) To what extent does the fidelity of implementation of PBIS predict teachers’ perceptions of safety? (2) To what extent does the fidelity of implementation of PBIS predict elementary students’ school safety perceptions, junior kindergarten through fifth …

Improving Pharmacovigilance Signal Detection From Clinical Notes With Locality Sensitive Neural Concept Embeddings, Justin Mower, Elmer Bernstam, Hua Xu, Sahiti Myneni, Devika Subramanian, Trevor Cohen

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Although pharmaceutical products undergo clinical trials to profile efficacy and safety, some adverse drug reactions (ADRs) are only discovered after release to market. Post-market drug safety surveillance - pharmacovigilance - leverages information from various sources to proactively identify such ADRs. Clinical notes are one source of observational data that could assist this process, but their inherent complexity can obfuscate possible ADR signals. In previous research, embeddings trained on observational reports have improved detection of such signals over commonly used statistical measures. Moreover, neural embedding methods which further encode juxtapositional information have shown promise on analogical retrieval tasks, suggesting proximity-based alternatives …

Papanicolaou (Pap) Test And Human Papillomavirus (Hpv) Test Adherence: Sexual Violence Victims And Fear Of Retraumatization, Murielle Sighe Ngoumkam

CGU Theses & Dissertations

To include all vulnerable women population who faced barriers to participating in preventive cervical cancer screening, the public health community must better understand the factors that affect their decision for getting Pap and HPV tests. Public health must understand the sexual violence victims, a subgroup of women who faced the onset of trauma and explore their adherence to routine screening. This study investigated whether sexual women with a history of sexual violence (SV), likelihood to get screened for cervical cancer would be impacted given the fear of suffering from secondary trauma during conventional screening procedures. Methods: Knowledge of cervical screening …

Examining The Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium Exams, Scholastic Aptitude Test, And High School Grade Point Average As Predictors Of College Readiness, Carol Ann Alexander

CGU Theses & Dissertations

The lack of college readiness in the United States is a critical issue that jeopardizes our economy. The demographic inequality of the crisis, particularly for low-income as well as Black and Latinx students, emerges from systemic problems of race and class in American education and society which suppress students’ educational and economic mobility. As part of the national reform efforts, state-based standardized tests such as the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC) were designed to be better aligned with K-12 Common Core standards and provide a more efficient and equitable measure of academic performance and college readiness in middle and high …

The Autodidactic Process Of Hugo Wolf And The Fourfold Learning Equation, Frank L. Strnad

CGU Theses & Dissertations

This dissertation investigates and discusses the self-study process of the Austro-Slovene composer Hugo Wolf. A fourfold learning equation consisting of imitation+emulation+invention =results will be presented, discussed, and applied to the musical compositions of Hugo Wolf, who learned how to compose music mostly by self-study, and minimal formal conservatory level training. Standard methods of analysis of musical construct, harmony, and orchestration will be used to evaluate each musical work. The selected musical works and their musical qualities were chosen to illustrate the effectiveness of the use of the fourfold learning equation by Wolf, both with and/or without instructional resources. This dissertation …

A Flora Of Coyote Ridge And Flat, Inyo County, California, Martin Purdy

CGU Theses & Dissertations

California’s Sierra Nevada mountain range contains a disproportionate share of the state’s plant diversity and is one of the most floristically diverse regions of its size in the United States. The high Sierra Nevada, in particular, has been identified as an important center of species richness and endemism within California. Anthropogenic climate warming is expected to disproportionately affect mountain ecosystems, and models have predicted serious habitat contraction and extirpation for many alpine plant taxa. A specimen-based inventory of the vascular and non-vascular plants of Coyote Ridge and Flat was conducted to establish baseline data for one such sensitive alpine and …

Carnivalizing The Nation: Reassessing The Trinidad And Tobago Carnival As An Inclusive Platform For Local And Diaspora Cultural Identity, Shari Bissoondatt

CGU Theses & Dissertations

Trinidad and Tobago's 2020 National Cultural policy ostensibly seeks to build the twin islands’ cultural confidence through the development of a unifying and empowering national cultural identity. However, this research asserts that the current policy undermines these national goals by approaching its community through problematic colonial, nationalist frameworks and through centralizing the annual carnival festival. This positioning poses several key problems. First, it reinscribes the colonial cultural identity of the island. Second, this nationalist, Christian colonial approach reinforces a binary of belonging and non-belonging that excludes minoritized, diasporic, and non-conforming gender communities. Third, by centralizing carnival in cultural policy, the …

Racial And Ethnic Disparities In Diabetes-Related Healthcare Service Use In The United States, 2016–2020, Gaole Song

CGU Theses & Dissertations

Diabetes is a serious public health issue in the United States. As one of the leading causes of death, the prevalence of diabetes has increased steadily and leads to an enormous medical and societal burden each year. Compared to non-Hispanic White adults, racial/ethnic minority adults have a higher risk to develop diabetes and its complications. Proper healthcare service use is important for reducing the prevalence of diabetes and the risk of complications. However, minority populations receive a lower quality healthcare service and have greater barriers to diabetes self-management. To get a better understanding of racial disparities in diabetes-related healthcare service …

Tales Of Urban Livability－ Vermont Avenue In Los Angeles As Told By Tree Canopy Cover, Hoi Cheng Wong

Pomona Senior Theses

As city-goers and residents of urban and suburban spaces, we are constantly on the move. It is no surprise that we often neglect the static trees and plants that seemingly blend into the background of our day-to-day rush to our next destination. Unfortunately, once we do have a chance to pause to take a look around us, or to pause long enough to feel the heat of the sun beaming down on our bare skin, we are decades too late in realizing the absence of trees at the location in which we are standing. This thesis contributes critical insight to …

Looking To The Future Of Wildlife Conservation: Durable Wildlife Policy For The 21st Century, Charlie R. Booher

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Wildlife conservation in the United States was built by the dollars of consumptive users. Monies from the sale of hunting licenses, as well as excise taxes on firearms, ammunition, and archery tackle through the Pittman-Robertson Federal Aid in Wildlife Restoration Act (PR), currently fuel a complex system of wildlife conservation via multiple levels of government. However, the number of hunters in this country is rapidly declining, the sale of firearms and ammunition is increasingly unrelated to hunting, and contemporary consumers tend to express different values than traditional hunters. These changes pose significant challenges of relevancy and funding to state and …

A Machine Learning Algorithm Improves Surface Freeze-Thaw Classification, Fredrick Bunt

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

The frozen or thawed state of the land surface is an important factor affecting a wide range of natural processes such as surface water movement, the carbon cycle, and ecosystem development. It is also important for human endeavors such as permafrost engineering and agricultural planning. This makes having an accurate record important. The Freeze-Thaw (FT) Earth System Data Record (FT-ESDR) is a global, daily product that strives to be a reliable record of the FT ground state. In its current form, the FT-ESDR uses annual regression analysis of reanalysis surface air temperatures (SAT) and brightness temperatures (Tb) at each grid …

Causes And Consquences Of Fire In Forest Ecosystems Of The Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness, Melissa Jaffe

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

No abstract provided.

A Novel Pathway For The Production Of Poly-N-Acetylglucosamine By Borreliaceae, Adam Matthew Drobish

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Poly-N-acetylglucosamine (PNAG) is an extracellular polysaccharide consisting of β-1,6 N-acetylglucosamine monomers. PNAG is a key component of biofilms produced by diverse bacteria including Escherichia coli, Staphylococcus aureus, Yersinia pestis, Bacillus subtilis¸and many more. The structure of PNAG is highly conserved across the microbial world. Here, we demonstrate that PNAG is produced by two Borrelia species, Borrelia (Borreliella) burgdorferi and Borrelia hermsii. PNAG production in B. burgdorferi, the Lyme disease spirochete, depends on pngA (bb0620), a gene annotated to express a glycosyl hydrolase family 3 (GH3) enzyme, which is a novel pathway. Surprisingly, in B. burgdorferi, PNAG appears to be intracellular, …

The Effects Humidity & Temperature Has On Dna Contamination During Storage, Samantha Leigh Allison Ramey

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Studies have been conducted on DNA cross-contamination throughout the criminal investigation process in order to evaluation the possibility that DNA from one sample could potentially influence the outcome of another. However, no published studies have examined the potential for contamination during the storage of genetic evidence after samples have been taken from crime scenes or suspects. This study is a continuation of a preliminary project, which examined storage drying time in relation to cross-contamination. The current study tested temperature and humidity for the potential of cross-contamination during storage prior to extraction. Prior to storage, 50 μl of male saliva was …

Linear Programming Analysis And Diet Breadth Modeling At Bridge River, British Columbia, Sean Patrick Boyd

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Studies in diet breadth modeling and patch choice have been and continue to be a hot topic of interest among practitioners of human behavioral ecology and the set of data available at Bridge River can certainly add to these debates and discussions that have been dominating anthropology in the past few decades. The faunal assemblage of Housepit 54’s 17 anthropogenic floors have provided researchers with a plethora of data that clearly indicates periods of resource depletion and partial to full site abandonment. Using Linear Programming and Diet Breadth Modelling I analyze the most represented species in the record and establish …

Brain Antigens Stimulate Proliferation Of T Lymphocytes With A Pathogenic Phenotype In Multiple Sclerosis Patients, Assaf Gottlieb, Hoai Phuong T Pham, John William Lindsey

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

A method to stimulate T lymphocytes with a broad range of brain antigens would facilitate identification of the autoantigens for multiple sclerosis and enable definition of the pathogenic mechanisms important for multiple sclerosis. In a previous work, we found that the obvious approach of culturing leukocytes with homogenized brain tissue does not work because the brain homogenate suppresses antigen-specific lymphocyte proliferation. We now report a method that substantially reduces the suppressive activity. We used this non-suppressive brain homogenate to stimulate leukocytes from multiple sclerosis patients and controls. We also stimulated with common viruses for comparison. We measured proliferation, selected the …

A Multimodal Clinical Data Resource For Personalized Risk Assessment Of Sudden Unexpected Death In Epilepsy, Xiaojin Li, Shiqiang Tao, Samden D Lhatoo, Licong Cui, Yan Huang, Johnson P Hampson, Guo-Qiang Zhang

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Epilepsy affects ~2–3 million individuals in the United States, a third of whom have uncontrolled seizures. Sudden unexpected death in epilepsy (SUDEP) is a catastrophic and fatal complication of poorly controlled epilepsy and is the primary cause of mortality in such patients. Despite its huge public health impact, with a ~1/1,000 incidence rate in persons with epilepsy, it is an uncommon enough phenomenon to require multi-center efforts for well-powered studies. We developed the Multimodal SUDEP Data Resource (MSDR), a comprehensive system for sharing multimodal epilepsy data in the NIH funded Center for SUDEP Research. The MSDR aims at accelerating research …

Charter School Administrators' Perceptions Of Local Policies Regarding Transgender Student Access To School Facilities, Derrick Armstead

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Researchers have focused on the viewpoints of conventional public-school leaders regarding school policies and implementation that influence transgender pupil access to school facilities; the perceptions of charter school administrators are less known regarding this phenomenon. The purpose of this qualitative study was to explore the perceptions of charter school administrators regarding their school policies and implementation that influence transgender student access to school facilities that correspond to their gender identity. Raffo and Gunter's combination of leadership for inclusiveness and use of local setting knowledge when implementing policies provided the conceptual framework for this study. Data were collected through semistructured interviews …

A Social Constructivism View Of Police Community Relations In Saint Louis' Inner-City Communities, Tyrone Carter

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

The implementation of policies and initiatives often have adverse effects, causing societal harm or encouraging unprecedented events. Proactive policing strategies like Stop and Frisk Initiatives or similar tactics have historically caused trust issues between Missouri law enforcement and the community they protect and serve, complicating an inevitable relationship needed to enhance public safety. This research sought to examine how community public perception and social constructions influence government laws and statutes in Saint Louis. The theory that guided this study was the Social Constructions of Target Populations Theory; the case study examined how implicit biases in law enforcement shape the perceptions …

New Development Of Neutrosophic Probability, Neutrosophic Statistics, Neutrosophic Algebraic Structures, And Neutrosophic Plithogenic Optimizations, Florentin Smarandache, Yanhui Guo

Branch Mathematics and Statistics Faculty and Staff Publications

This collective book presents state-of-the-art papers on new topics related to neutrosophic theories, such as neutrosophic algebraic structures, neutrosophic triplet algebraic structures, neutrosophic extended triplet algebraic structures, neutrosophic algebraic hyperstructures, neutrosophic triplet algebraic hyperstructures, neutrosophic n-ary algebraic structures, neutrosophic n-ary algebraic hyperstructures, refined neutrosophic algebraic structures, refined neutrosophic algebraic hyperstructures, quadruple neutrosophic algebraic structures, refined quadruple neutrosophic algebraic structures, neutrosophic image processing, neutrosophic image classification, neutrosophic computer vision, neutrosophic machine learning, neutrosophic artificial intelligence, neutrosophic data analytics, neutrosophic deep learning, and neutrosophic symmetry, as well as their applications in the real world.

Neutrosophic Statistics Is An Extension Of Interval Statistics, While Plithogenic Statistics Is The Most General Form Of Statistics (Third Version), Florentin Smarandache

Branch Mathematics and Statistics Faculty and Staff Publications

: In this paper we prove that Neutrosophic Statistics is an extension of the Interval Statistics, since it may deal with all types of indeterminacies (with respect to the data, inferential procedures, probability distributions, graphical representations, etc.), it allows the reduction of indeterminacy, and it uses the neutrosophic probability that is more general than imprecise and classical probabilities, and has more detailed corresponding probability density functions. While Interval Statistics only deals with indeterminacy that can be represented by intervals. And we respond to the arguments by Woodall et al. [1]. We show that not all indeterminacies (uncertainties) may be represented …