Digital Commons Network^™

Epigenetics And Social Inequalities In Asthma And Allergy, Elizabeth S. Clausing, Cassidy J. Tomlinson, Amy L. Non

School of Global Integrative Studies: Faculty Publications

Respiratory illnesses, such as asthma and allergy disorders, are disproportionately more common among minority racial/ethnic groups and those of low socioeconomic status. In the United States, asthma prevalence and severity are highest among Puerto Ricans (19.2%), American Indians/Alaska Natives (13%), and Black Americans (12.7%) and higher in families living below the poverty threshold than among those living above it (11% vs 8%–9%).¹ Many studies of asthma/allergy inequalities assume that genetic differences underlie racial/ethnic differences in these disorders, pointing to genetic ancestry differences between races, but most genetic variants fail to explain racial/ethnic differences and are usually studied only in …

A Network Perspective On Multi-Scale Water Governance In The Lake Champlain Basin, Vermont, Patrick Bitterman, Christopher Koliba, Anna Singer

School of Global Integrative Studies: Faculty Publications

The prevalence and persistence of harmful cyanobacterial blooms demonstrate the importance of governance systems that effectively engage with many actors to address nonpoint pollution from a variety of sources across multiple spatial domains. Although the importance of social-ecological alignment on effective governance is increasingly clear, governance systems often evolve incrementally and in a manner that fails to adequately align resources and governance networks with biophysical structures, processes, and legacies. Through a survey of water governance actors in the Lake Champlain Basin, we map the structure of the water governance network and identify the key information brokers, flows of resources, and …

Annual Report: Nebraska Extension In Lancaster County, January 1, 2023 Through December 31, 2023

Lancaster County, Nebraska Extension: Reports

Lancaster County Extension information from 2023. Contents include:

1) About Extension - Lancaster County Extension mission statement, overview and impact reports;

2) Staff and Programs - staff directory and Extension Educator annual program summaries;

3) Financials - summaries of 2022-2023 budget expenditures and fiscal year 2023-2024 budget; and

4) Media - website and social media information, samples of our Nebline newsletter and local newspaper articles.

Wpa News 122 (2023), World Pheasant Association

Galliformes Specialist Group and Affiliated Societies: Newsletters

WPA News (Winter 2023), number 122

Published by the World Pheasant Association

Towards Modeling Human Attention From Eye Movements For Neural Source Code Summarization, Aakash Bansal, Bonita Sharif, Collin Mcmillan

School of Computing: Faculty Publications

Neural source code summarization is the task of generating natural language descriptions of source code behavior using neural networks. A fundamental component of most neural models is an attention mechanism. The attention mechanism learns to connect features in source code to specific words to use when generating natural language descriptions. Humans also pay attention to some features in code more than others. This human attention reflects experience and high-level cognition well beyond the capability of any current neural model. In this paper, we use data from published eye-tracking experiments to create a model of this human attention. The model predicts …

Exploring The Impact Of Pediatric Short Bowel Syndrome On Parent Well‐Being Using A Disease‐Specific Pilot Survey, Marie L. Neumann, Jessica Y. Allen, Amy Ladner, Swapna Kakani, Meaghann S. Weaver, David F. Mercer

Department of Communication Studies: Faculty Publications

Background: Children with short bowel syndrome (SBS) have complex care needs, most of which are met in the home by family caregivers who may experience a range of stressors unique to this experience. Prior research suggests that parents of children with SBS have poorer health‐related quality of life than peers parenting children without health needs, but the mechanisms shaping parent outcomes are understudied.

Methods: A pilot survey was developed using a community‐driven research design to measure the impact of disease‐specific items on parent‐perceived well‐being. The cross‐sectional survey, which included both closed‐ended and open‐ended items, was distributed to a …

2023 Nebraska Business

College of Business: Trade Publications

2023 Nebraska Business

Turfgrass Alternatives For The Modern Yard, John Lonowski

Department of Environmental Studies: Undergraduate Student Theses

The considerable maintenance and irrigation required of turfgrass lawns can often be seen as a fruitless endeavor, as it consumes substantial resources but yields minimal economic benefit. The goal of this paper is to highlight the resource needs of traditional turfgrass lawns and identify and test alternative lawn types that are still aesthetically pleasing while being more sustainable than traditional turfgrass. To obtain the results, the experiment was conducted in Alda, Nebraska employing a randomized complete block design, which tested four entries at two separate locations, each with three replications. The entries include: 1. Buffalograss, 2. Tall Fescue, 3. White …

Interspecific Oral Rabies Vaccine Bait Competition In The Southeast United States, Wesley C. Dixon, Jacob E. Hill, Richard Chipman, Amy J. Davis, Amy Gilbert, James C. Beasley, Olin E. Rhodes Jr., Guha Dharmarajan

United States Department of Agriculture Wildlife Services: Staff Publications

The United States Department of Agriculture’s National Rabies Management Program (NRMP) has coordinated the use of oral rabies vaccination (ORV) to control the spread of raccoon rabies virus variant west of the Appalachian Mountains since 1997. Working with state and local partners, the NRMP deploys ORV baits containing a rabies vaccine, primarily targeting raccoon populations (Procyon lotor). Bait competition between raccoons and non-target species may limit the effectiveness of ORV programs, but the extent of bait competition remains poorly quantified, particularly in the southeastern United States. We placed placebo ORV baits in bottomland hardwood (n = 637 baits) and upland …

Prior Parental Incarceration And The Impact Towards Attitudes About Law Enforcement As Adults, Jennifer Spencer

Undergraduate Honors Theses

The number of incarcerations has been climbing drastically, especially in the United States. A forgotten minority which remains understudied is those children of incarcerated individuals. Many studies have found parental separation to be associated with problematic behavior in children. However, little to no information is known on the attitudes of offspring of incarcerated people toward law enforcement and the police. The current study examined just this, researching children of incarcerated parents’ attitudes towards legitimacy and confidence in the police during adulthood. Participants (N = 55) were undergraduate students at a small university who gained extra credit for voluntary participation. …

Foreword: Symbiotic Perspectives On The Processes Of Biology And Art, Scott F. Gilbert

Biology Faculty Works

No abstract provided.

Process Epistemologies For The Careful Interplay Of Art And Biology: An Afterword, S. R. Gilbert, Scott F. Gilbert

Biology Faculty Works

No abstract provided.

Examining A Blood Biomarker Approach To Blood-Brain Barrier Disruption, Samantha Ford

Theses and Dissertations--Medical Sciences

Blood-brain barrier disruption has been identified to associate with the pathogenesis several neurological diseases such as dementia [1, 2], multiple sclerosis[3, 4], acute or chronic cerebral ischemia[5], brain trauma[5], meningitis[5], encephalitis[5], stroke[6], and seizures[7]. Being able to effectively identify blood-brain barrier disruption is limited in methodology. The current standard is using a cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) albumin to serum albumin index, which requires the use of a lumbar puncture. A novel method of identifying blood-brain barrier disruption utilizing blood biomarkers is proposed in this study. Participants in this study had previously collected blood and CSF samples, which were analyzed to compare …

Rnai-Mediated Gene Silencing In The Exotic Redbay Ambrosia Beetle, Xyleborus Glabratus, And Insect-Fungal Interactions Within The Laurel Wilt Complex, Morgan Christine Knutsen

Theses and Dissertations--Entomology

Laurel wilt disease (LWD) is a lethal vascular disease impacting lauraceous hosts caused by Harringtonia lauricola, the fungal symbiont of the redbay ambrosia beetle (Xyleborus glabratus Eichoff) (RAB) (Coleoptera: Curculionidae). LWD has caused tree mortality throughout the southeastern United States and is continuing to spread into new regions. Current management methods have not been successful in preventing spread, warranting investigation into innovative techniques including RNA interference (RNAi).

Elongation factor-1 alpha (ef1a) and actin (act) were established as stably expressed reference genes after exposing beetles to different photoperiod, temperature, and dsRNA exposure. After RAB oral …

Linking Previous Experiences To Behavior And Health In The Honey Bee (Apis Mellifera), Rebecca R. Westwick

Theses and Dissertations--Entomology

An organism’s ability to respond to changing conditions can be vital to its success. Indeed, plasticity is a common feature of living organisms. Much of the research in this area, though, has focused on effects caused by environmental conditions. What has received relatively less attention is how social experiences and broader features of an organism’s social environment can lead to long-lasting changes in health and behavior. This knowledge gap exists despite the well-documented existence of health and behavioral effects after social interactions in certain taxa such as humans.

Social insects such as honey bees provide an excellent opportunity to better …

Epigenetic Regulation Of Insect Development, Yaoyu Jiao

Theses and Dissertations--Entomology

Insects undergo a series of distinct life stages such as egg, larva and pupa to develop into mature adults capable of reproduction throughout their life cycle. In the larval stage, insects experience the fastest growth with voracious feeding and multiple cuticle shedding resulting in hundreds-of-fold increasing of size. During metamorphosis, insects stop increasing body size but go through dramatic tissue transformation, developing wings and other adult features. The characteristic mode of insect development, especially the metamorphosis, makes insects the most successful group of animals on the earth. However, the epigenetic mechanisms behind insect development remain elusive. Studying the epigenetic regulation …

Homopurine Guanine-Rich Sequences In Complex With N-Methyl Mesoporphyrin Ix Form Parallel G-Quadruplex Dimers And Display A Unique Symmetry Tetrad, Ming Ye , '23, Erin V. Chen , '23, S. H. Pfeil, Kailey N. Martin, Tamanaa Atrafi , '23, Sara Yun , '23, Zahara Martinez , '23, Liliya A. Yatsunyk

Chemistry & Biochemistry Faculty Works

DNA can fold into G-quadruplexes (GQs), non-canonical secondary structures formed by π-π stacking of G-tetrads. GQs are important in many biological processes, which makes them promising therapeutic targets. We identified a 42-nucleotide long, purine-only G-rich sequence from human genome, which contains eight G-stretches connected by A and AAAA loops. We divided this sequence into five unique segments, four guanine stretches each, named GA1-5. In order to investigate the role of adenines in GQ structure formation, we performed biophysical and X-ray crystallographic studies of GA1-5 and their complexes with a highly selective GQ ligand, N-methyl mesoporphyrin IX (NMM). Our data indicate …

Institute Of Public Health Newsletter- Volume5, Issue1, Institute Of Public Health (Iph)

Institute of Public Health Newsletter (IPHNL) and Other Publications

No abstract provided.

A Really Good Example Helps Learning About An Abstract Concept, Ava Funkhouser, Elena Nicoladis

International Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching & Learning

University students are often asked to learn abstract concepts. Abstract concepts are hard to learn. Giving specific examples can help learning abstract concepts. These examples might limit understanding to the similarities between the abstract domain and particular examples. The primary purpose of this study was to test whether exposure to multiple examples would lead to better learning than exposure to a single example. Secondarily, we were interested in whether there was any particularly effective example. Introductory psychology students were invited to learn about the abstract concept of semiotics, through either 1) three of five distinct examples or 2) a single …

Eating Disorders And Autism: A Network Approach, Lillian C. King

Undergraduate Theses, Professional Papers, and Capstone Artifacts

This paper explores the overlap of ED and ASD symptoms, and evaluates the results of a study that used network analysis to investigate pathway and core ED and ASD comorbidity symptoms. Eating Disorders (EDs) and autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have several overlapping symptoms that may inform our understanding of both disorders. Increased knowledge of the overlap of EDs and ASD can improve the treatment of EDs in those with ASD.

Reproductive Justice And Feminism: A Comparative Legal Analysis Of The Policies And Healthcare Systems In The United States And Colombia, Samantha Cooke

Modern Languages, Philosophy and Classics Theses

This thesis seeks to offer a comparative legal analysis of the state of the laws regarding abortion and reproductive autonomy in the United States of America and Colombia. This thesis will first address a brief history of feminism and its origins in the United States and Colombia. It will also analyze the policies held by each respective nation; starting with old legislation and moving to current policies regarding abortion. It will also include a comparison between both the U.S. and Colombia; offering suggestions for the future with regards to potential policy changes. The purpose of this thesis is to demonstrate …

Agency And Strategy: Chastity Exemplars In An Early Qing Anthology, Jessica Dvorak Moyer

East Asian Languages & Cultures: Faculty Publications

This article reads exemplary biographies of chaste widows and women who committed suicide to preserve their chastity in the 1656 Yuding Nei ze yanyi 御定内則衍義 (Imperially Commissioned Expanded Meaning of the “Inner Standards”) by Fu Yijian 傅以漸 (1609–1665, jinshi 1646). In this anthology commissioned by the Shunzhi emperor on behalf of his mother, Fu's commentary emphasizes both the agency of individual women and the mutual resonance of personal virtue and political order. He not only praises the exemplars' virtue but also their agency, intelligence, and strategy. He explicitly acknowledges the different factors that could make chastity more difficult and states …

Evaluation Of Mesenchymal Stem Cells In Autoimmune Disease: A Systematic Review And Meta-Analysis, Hailey Nicole Swain

Masters Theses

"Mesenchymal stem cells, also known as multipotential stem/progenitor cells and mesenchymal stem/progenitor cells, are denoted by the acronym MSCs. MSCs can differentiate into multiple lineages from different germ layers in vitro, and in limited situations, in vivo. MSCs have broad anti-inflammatory and immune-modulatory properties, which is the greatest focus of MSCs in clinical testing. Despite their promise and use in over 950 clinical trials, pivotal questions remain unanswered. Recent clinical trials have demonstrated that when MSCs are harvested from autoimmune patients, they show a reduction in their therapeutic efficacy in comparison to MSCs from a healthy person. Identifying quality MSCs …

Environmental Dna Metabarcoding As A Tool For Fish Community Assessment In Wetlands, Eric Ludwig

Masters Theses

"Environmental DNA (eDNA) metabarcoding is a genetically based method of assessing biodiversity in aquatic environments. While the efficacy of eDNA surveys has been well documented in riverine and marine systems, it has been relatively underemployed in freshwater wetland environments. In this study, we conducted an eDNA metabarcoding survey of fish diversity and its seasonal variation in a wetland along the Mississippi River in the Missouri Bootheel. Samples were collected from both permanent and seasonal water bodies including oxbow lakes, a shallow, man-made lake, a ditch, and a slough. For each of the 28 sites in this study, three water samples …

Implementing Effective University - Level Small Satellite Assembly, Integration, And Testing Procedures, Tyler Patrick Hoover

Masters Theses

"As applications for satellite assets grow within government and commercial spheres, demand for aerospace engineers and related technicians has pushed universities to develop graduates with relevant knowledge in the field. As such, universities began to grow university satellite programs to give members hands-on experience and a background of working on satellite systems before entering the workforce.

The M-SAT team at Missouri University of Science and Technology, along with contributions and assistance from the Air Force Research Laboratory and NASA, are progressing their first satellite mission through assembly, integration, and testing (AIT) development. This document serves to give a background into …

Tropospheric Correction For Insar Using Machine Learning, Ngo Hi Kenny Yue

Masters Theses

"Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR) is a popular technique for studying Earth's surface deformation caused by phenomena like earthquakes and subsidence. However, its accuracy is limited by tropospheric delays caused by water vapor in the atmosphere. This limitation can be overcome by using methods that correct for tropospheric noise, such as statistical, empirical, and predictive approaches. This study explores the potential of using machine learning algorithms to predict the zenith total delay caused by tropospheric effects in InSAR measurements. The study employs two different machine learning algorithms, random forest and neural networks, to learn the relationship between numerical weather prediction …

Optimizing The Placement Of Multiple Uav--Lidar Units Under Road Priority And Resolution Requirements, Zachary Michael Osterwisch

Masters Theses

"Real-time road traffic information is crucial for intelligent transportation systems (ITS) applications, like traffic navigation or emergency response management, but acquiring such data is tremendously challenging in practice because of the high costs and inefficient placement of sensors. Some modern ITS applications contribute to this problem by equipping vehicles with multiple light detection and ranging (LiDAR) sensors, which are expensive and gather data inefficiently; one solution that avoids vehicle-mounted LiDAR acquisition has been to install elevated LiDAR instruments along roadways, but this approach remains unrefined. The eventual development of sixth-generation (6G) wireless communication will enable new, creative solutions to solve …

Meta-Analysis Of Mesenchymal Stem Cell Gene Expression Data From Obese And Non-Obese Patients, Dakota William Shields

Masters Theses

"The prevalence of gene expression microarray datasets in public repositories gives opportunity to analyze biologically interesting datasets without running the laboratory aspect in house. Such experimentation is expensive in terms of finances, time, and expertise, which often results in low numbers of replicates. Meta-analysis techniques attempt to overcome issues due to few biological or technical replicates by combining separate experiments together to increase statistical power. Proper statistical considerations help to offset issues like simultaneous testing of thousands of genes, unintended hybridization, and other noises.

Microarrays contain light intensities from tens of thousands of hybridized probes giving a measure of gene …

Predicting Precedent: A Psycholinguistic Artificial Intelligence In The Supreme Court, Kimo Gandall, Chris Haley, Juliana Chhouk, Logan Knight, Alex Wang, Bella Demarco

Journal of Law, Technology, & the Internet

Since the proliferation of analytic methodologies and ‘big data’ in the 1980s, there have been multiple studies claiming to offer consistent predictions for Supreme Court behavior. Political scientists focus on analyzing the ideology of judges, with prediction accuracy as high as 70%. Institutionalists, such as Kaufmann (2019), seek to make predictions on verdicts based on a thorough, qualitative analysis of rules and structures, with predictive accuracy as high as 75%. We argue that a psycholinguistic model utilizing machine learning (SCOTUS_AI) can best predict Court outcomes. Extracting sentiment features from parsed briefs through the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC), our …

Genetic Capitalism: The Anthropological Evolution Of Antibiotic Resistant Bacteria, Mehin Suleiman

Hispanic Studies Honors Papers

This thesis titled "Genetic Capitalism: The Anthropological Evolution of Antibiotic Resistant Bacteria" explores the evolution of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) genotypes in bacteria and its impact on our destruction of a once symbiotic relationship with bacterial species. By taking an anthropological approach, I investigate how material relations, social institutions, cultural meanings, and political relations within and beyond the microcosm of bacteria have led to mass bacterial resistance. In the course of my research, I examine the cultures of bacterial cultures and their interactions, as well as the language of bacteria and their social intelligence, in order to anthropomorphize bacterial species that …