Digital Commons Network^™

Identity Negotiations Of A Mexican Transnational In The Rio Grande Valley: Crossing The Border Daily, Xiaodi Zhou, David Martinez-Prieto

Bilingual and Literacy Studies Faculty Publications

This narrative case study examines the cultural affiliations of one transnational US-born Mexican American college student, and her various intersecting veins of identity. The aim was to capture the bordered existence in the many criteria of her being. Her linguistic identity, pop culture identity, spiritual identity, as well as her general cultural affiliations are examined as intersecting rays of influence. Utilizing Anzaldúa’s (2012) bordered identity as theoretical grounding for her partitioned selves, along with Bakhtin’s (1986) notion of cultural and linguistic dialogue, we analyzed the complexities in this one bicultural, bilingual young woman venturing into adulthood. This study sheds light …

Threshold For Learning: The Case For Prioritizing The In-Between Spaces In Education, Xiaodi Zhou

Bilingual and Literacy Studies Faculty Publications

In this paper, the author analyses learning as a function of the threshold between parties and ideas. Using Bakhtinian dialogic theory, literacy learning in particular is envisioned as a dialogue of the threshold. This instructional threshold is viewed both in pedagogical and biological terms. The physiological process of learning is described, making a biological case for instructional scaffolding and the gradual release of responsibility in the classroom. The dialogue of different disciplines serves as integration of several thresholds and further strengthening of learning. Curriculum integration is then promoted as a means to lasting learning.

An Investigation Of The Effect Of Cyclic Loading Of Bone On Osteocyte Processes Spanning Micro-Cracks As A Driver Of Targeted Remodelling Of Bone, Morgana Pires Afonso Shirsath

Doctoral

Bone remodelling is essential to maintain and improve the quality of bones. This occurs with the action of specialised cells - osteoclasts and osteoblasts - which replace the old bone tissue with new in regions where damage has occurred. Osteocytes are responsible for signalling the presence of damage and trigger the bone remodelling response. According to the Scissors Model, the presence of micro-cracks causes rupture of the osteocyte processes by fatigue because of the repeated stretching resulting from the relative movement of micro-crack faces, when bone is subjected to cyclic loads.

Lawyering Somewhere Between Computation And The Will To Act: A Digital Age Reflection, Jeffrey M. Lipshaw

Suffolk University Law School Faculty Works

This is a reflection on machine and human contributions to lawyering in the digital age. Increasingly capable machines can already unleash massive processing power on vast stores of discovery and research data to assess relevancies and, at times, to predict legal outcomes. At the same time, there is wide acceptance, at least among legal academics, of the conclusions from behavioral psychology that slow, deliberative “System 2” thinking (perhaps replicated computationally) needs to control the heuristics and biases to which fast, intuitive “System 1” thinking is prone. Together, those trends portend computational deliberation – artificial intelligence or machine learning – substituting …

Seventy-Five Years Of Service: An Overview Of The College Of American Pathologists' Proficiency Testing Program In Histocompatibility And Identity Testing, H Cliff Sullivan, Manish J Gandhi, Sujata Gaitonde, Ramya Narasimhan, Ketevan Gendzekhadze, Soumya Pandey, Rhonda K Roby, George C Maha, Harmeet Kaur, Jennifer J Schiller, Julie Mcdowell, Maria Smith, Chang Liu, Gerald P Morris

2020-Current year OA Pubs

The Histocompatibility and Identity Testing Committee offers an overview of the College of American Pathologists' (CAP) Proficiency Testing (PT) program, commemorating its significant 75th anniversary in 2024. The CAP PT program has undergone significant growth and evolution over the years, ultimately achieving Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services approval. In 1979, CAP's partnership with the American Association for Clinical Histocompatibility Testing marked a pivotal moment, leading to the creation of the first proficiency testing survey in 1980. This laid the foundation for various PT programs managed by the CAP Histocompatibility and Identity Testing Committee, including HLA antibody testing, HLA molecular …

Molecular Techniques Drive Cutting Edge Advancements In Management Of Cutaneous T Cell Lymphoma, Mitchell N Lefebvre, Nicholas Borcherding, Ryan J Reis, Eric Mou, Vincent Liu, Ali Jabbari

2020-Current year OA Pubs

Cutaneous 5T cell lymphoma (CTCL), characterized by malignant T cells infiltrating the skin with potential for dissemination, remains a challenging disease to diagnose and treat due to disease heterogeneity, treatment resistance, and lack of effective and standardized diagnostic and prognostic clinical tools. Currently, diagnosis of CTCL practically relies on clinical presentation, histopathology, and immunohistochemistry. These methods are collectively fraught with limitations in sensitivity and specificity. Fortunately, recent advances in flow cytometry, polymerase chain reaction, high throughput sequencing, and other molecular techniques have shown promise in improving diagnosis and treatment of CTCL. Examples of these advances include T cell receptor clonotyping …

Large-Scale Exome Array Summary Statistics Resources For Glycemic Traits To Aid Effector Gene Prioritization, Sara M. Willems, Ping An, Michael A. Province, Et Al.

2020-Current year OA Pubs

No abstract provided.

Inhibition Of Mirna Associated With A Disease-Specific Signature And Secreted Via Extracellular Vesicles Of Systemic Lupus Erythematosus Patients Suppresses Target Organ Inflammation In A Humanized Mouse Model, Nicholas A Young, Emily Schwarz, Braden M Zeno, Shane Bruckner, Rosana A Mesa, Kyle Jablonski, Lai-Chu Wu, Elisha D O Roberson, Wael N Jarjour

2020-Current year OA Pubs

INTRODUCTION: Distinct, disease-associated intracellular miRNA (miR) expression profiles have been observed in peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) of systemic lupus erythematous (SLE) patients. Additionally, we have identified novel estrogenic responses in PBMCs from SLE patients and demonstrated that estrogen upregulates toll-like receptor (TLR)7 and TLR8 expression. TLR7 and TLR8 bind viral-derived single-stranded RNA to stimulate innate inflammatory responses, but recent studies have shown that miR-21, mir-29a, and miR-29b can also bind and activate these receptors when packaged and secreted in extracellular vesicles (EVs). The objective of this study was to evaluate the association of EV-encapsulated small RNA species in SLE …

Hydrogen Deuterium Exchange And Other Mass Spectrometry-Based Approaches For Epitope Mapping, Prashant N Jethva, Michael L Gross

2020-Current year OA Pubs

Antigen-antibody interactions are a fundamental subset of protein-protein interactions responsible for the "survival of the fittest". Determining the interacting interface of the antigen, called an epitope, and that on the antibody, called a paratope, is crucial to antibody development. Because each antigen presents multiple epitopes (unique footprints), sophisticated approaches are required to determine the target region for a given antibody. Although X-ray crystallography, Cryo-EM, and nuclear magnetic resonance can provide atomic details of an epitope, they are often laborious, poor in throughput, and insensitive. Mass spectrometry-based approaches offer rapid turnaround, intermediate structural resolution, and virtually no size limit for the …

A Word For Mama, Ebony Christie

Athena: Undergraduate Research and Literary Journal

No abstract provided.

A Randomized Implementation Trial To Increase Adoption Of Evidence-Informed Consent Practices, Erin D Solomon, Jessica Mozersky, Melody Goodman, Meredith V Parsons, Kari A Baldwin, Annie B Friedrich, Jenine K Harris, James M Dubois

2020-Current year OA Pubs

INTRODUCTION: Several evidence-informed consent practices (ECPs) have been shown to improve informed consent in clinical trials but are not routinely used. These include optimizing consent formatting, using plain language, using validated instruments to assess understanding, and involving legally authorized representatives when appropriate. We hypothesized that participants receiving an implementation science toolkit and a social media push would have increased adoption of ECPs and other outcomes.

METHODS: We conducted a 1-year trial with clinical research professionals in the USA (

RESULTS: Participants who engaged more with the toolkit were more likely to have tried to implement an ECP during the trial …

A Comparison Of Two Hormonal Fertility Monitoring Systems For Ovulation Detection: A Pilot Study, Qiyan Mu, Richard J. Fehring

College of Nursing Faculty Research and Publications

Background and Objectives: Accuracy in detecting ovulation and estimating the fertile window in the menstrual cycle is essential for women to avoid or achieve pregnancy. There has been a rapid growth in fertility apps and home ovulation testing kits in recent years. Nevertheless, there lacks information on how well these apps perform in helping users understand their fertility in the menstrual cycle. This pilot study aimed to evaluate and compare the beginning, peak, and length of the fertile window as determined by a new luteinizing hormone (LH) fertility tracking app with the Clearblue Fertility Monitor (CBFM).

Materials and Methods: A …

Physical Activity, Inflammation, And Physical Function In Older Adults: Results From The Health & Retirement Study, Jeanne L. Hlebichuk, Randall J. Gretebeck, Mauricio Garnier-Villarreal, Linda B. Piacentine, Maharaj Singh, Kimberlee A. Gretebeck

College of Nursing Faculty Research and Publications

Physical function declines with aging due to physical and biological changes. The biological process of aging has been associated with increases in systemic inflammation and a greater risk for chronic conditions. In older adults, physical activity aids in maintenance of function. However, the influence of inflammatory biomarkers and adiposity on physical activity and physical function needs to be further explored. Methods: A cross-sectional secondary data analysis from Wave 13 of the Health & Retirement Study (HRS) core biennial data and Venous Blood Study (VBS) was conducted. Structural equation modeling was used to establish the model and test the relationships. Results: …

Intra-Marrow Penetrations And Root Coverage Outcomes: A Systematic Review, Vrisiis Kofina, Ving Wang, Alissa V. Fial, Dimitris N. Tatakis

School of Dentistry Faculty Research and Publications

Background

Intra-marrow penetrations (IMPs) have been performed during guided tissue regeneration (GTR) procedures with reported clinical benefits. The aim of this systematic review was to investigate the use and effect of IMPs during root coverage procedures.

Method

A broad search for human and animal studies was performed on PubMed, Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews and Cochrane Central Registry of Controlled Trials and Web of Science, following a registered review protocol (PROSPERO). All prospective study designs, case series and case reports on gingival recession treatment (follow-up ≥ 6 months) that employed IMPs were included. Root coverage, complete root coverage prevalence, and …

Tyramine And Its Amtyr1 Receptor Modulate Attention In Honey Bees (Apis Mellifera), Joseph S. Latshaw, Reece E. Mazade, Mary Peterson, Julie A. Mustard, Irina Sinakevitch, Lothar Wissler, Xiaojiao Guo, Chelsea N. Cook, Hong Lei, Jürgen Gadau, Brian Smith

Biological Sciences Faculty Research and Publications

Animals must learn to ignore stimuli that are irrelevant to survival and attend to ones that enhance survival. When a stimulus regularly fails to be associated with an important consequence, subsequent excitatory learning about that stimulus can be delayed, which is a form of nonassociative conditioning called ‘latent inhibition’. Honey bees show latent inhibition toward an odor they have experienced without association with food reinforcement. Moreover, individual honey bees from the same colony differ in the degree to which they show latent inhibition, and these individual differences have a genetic basis. To investigate the mechanisms that underly individual differences in …

Reappraising The Evolutionary History Of The Largest Known Gecko, The Presumably Extinct Hoplodactylus Delcourti, Via High-Throughput Sequencing Of Archival Dna, Matthew P. Heinicke, Stuart V. Nielsen, Aaron M. Bauer, Ryan Kelly, Anthony J. Geneva, Juan D. Daza, Shannon E. Keating, Tony Gamble

Biological Sciences Faculty Research and Publications

Hoplodactylus delcourti is a presumably extinct species of diplodactylid gecko known only from a single specimen of unknown provenance. It is by far the largest known gekkotan, approximately 50% longer than the next largest-known species. It has been considered a member of the New Zealand endemic genus Hoplodactylus based on external morphological features including shared toe pad structure. We obtained DNA from a bone sample of the only known specimen to generate high-throughput sequence data suitable for phylogenetic analysis of its evolutionary history. Complementary sequence data were obtained from a broad sample of diplodactylid geckos. Our results indicate that the …

Strong Dispersal Limitation Of Microbial Communities At Shackleton Glacier, Antarctica, Nathan P. Lemoine, Byron J. Adams, Melisa A. Diaz, Nicholas B. Dragone, Andre L.C. Franco, Noah Fierer, W. Berry Lyons, Ian Hogg, Diana H. Wall

Biological Sciences Faculty Research and Publications

Microbial communities can be structured by both deterministic and stochastic processes, but the relative importance of these processes remains unknown. The ambiguity partly arises from an inability to disentangle soil microbial processes from confounding factors, such as aboveground plant communities or anthropogenic disturbance. In this study, we characterized the relative contributions of determinism and stochasticity to assembly processes of soil bacterial communities across a large environmental gradient of undisturbed Antarctic soils. We hypothesized that harsh soils would impose a strong environmental selection on microbial communities, whereas communities in benign soils would be structured largely by dispersal. Contrary to our expectations, …

Excess Dietary Sugar Alters Colonocyte Metabolism And Impairs The Proliferative Response To Damage, Ansen H.P. Burr, Junyi Ji, Kadir Ozler, Heather L. Mentrup, Onur Eskiocak, Brian Yueh, Rachel Cumberland, Ashley V. Menk, Natalie Rittenhouse, Christopher Marshall, Pailin Chiaranunt, Xiaoyi Zhang, Lauren Mullinax, Abigail Overacre-Delgoffe, Vaughn S. Cooper, Amanda C. Poholek, Greg M. Delgoffe, Kevin P. Mollen, Semir Beyaz, Timothy W. Hand

Biological Sciences Faculty Research and Publications

Background & Aims

The colonic epithelium requires continuous renewal by crypt resident intestinal stem cells (ISCs) and transit-amplifying (TA) cells to maintain barrier integrity, especially after inflammatory damage. The diet of high-income countries contains increasing amounts of sugar, such as sucrose. ISCs and TA cells are sensitive to dietary metabolites, but whether excess sugar affects their function directly is unknown.

Methods

Here, we used a combination of 3-dimensional colonoids and a mouse model of colon damage/repair (dextran sodium sulfate colitis) to show the direct effect of sugar on the transcriptional, metabolic, and regenerative functions of crypt ISCs and TA cells. …

Risk And Protection Of Different Rare Protein-Coding Variants Of Complement Component C4a In Age-Related Macular Degeneration, Johanna M Seddon, Dikha De, William Casazza, Shun-Yun Cheng, Claudio Punzo, Mark Daly, Danlei Zhou, Samantha L Coss, John P Atkinson, Chack-Yung Yu

2020-Current year OA Pubs

No abstract provided.

Safety And Efficacy Of Mca‐M2 Thrombectomy In Delayed Time Window: A Propensity Score Analysis From The Star Registry, Kaustubh Limaye, Joshua Osbun, Et Al.

2020-Current year OA Pubs

No abstract provided.

Transplantation Of Gut Microbiota From Old Mice Into Young Healthy Mice Reduces Lean Mass But Not Bone Mass, Lina Lawenius, Carrie Cowardin, Jeffrey I Gordon, Et Al.

2020-Current year OA Pubs

Aging is associated with low bone and lean mass as well as alterations in the gut microbiota (GM). In this study, we determined whether the reduced bone mass and relative lean mass observed in old mice could be transferred to healthy young mice by GM transplantation (GMT). GM from old (21-month-old) and young adult (5-month-old) donors was used to colonize germ-free (GF) mice in three separate studies involving still growing 5- or 11-week-old recipients and 17-week-old recipients with minimal bone growth. The GM of the recipient mice was similar to that of the donors, demonstrating successful GMT. GM from old …

Characterization Of Cerebrospinal Fluid (Csf) Microbiota At The Time Of Initial Surgical Intervention For Children With Hydrocephalus, Shailly Pandey, Kathryn B. Whitlock, Matthew R. Test, Paul Hodor, Christopher E. Pope, David D. Limbrick, Patrick J. Mcdonald, Jason S. Hauptman, Lucas R. Hoffman, Tamara D. Simon, Cerebrospinal Fluid Microbiota In Shunts (Climb) Study Group

2020-Current year OA Pubs

OBJECTIVE: To characterize the microbiota of the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) from children with hydrocephalus at the time of initial surgical intervention.

STUDY DESIGN: CSF was obtained at initial surgical intervention. One aliquot was stored in skim milk-tryptone-glucose-glycerol (STGG) medium and the second was unprocessed; both were then stored at -70°C. Bacterial growth for CSF samples stored in STGG were subsequently characterized using aerobic and anaerobic culture on blood agar and MALDI-TOF sequencing. All unprocessed CSF samples underwent 16S quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) sequencing, and a subset underwent standard clinical microbiological culture. CSF with culture growth (either after storage in …

Structural And Biophysical Characterization Of The Secreted, Β-Helical Adhesin Etpa Of Enterotoxigenic Escherichia Coli, Clifford Manyo Ntui, James M. Fleckenstein, Wolf-Dieter Schubert

2020-Current year OA Pubs

Enterotoxigenic Escherichia coli (ETEC) is a diarrhoeal pathogen associated with high morbidity and mortality especially among young children in developing countries. At present, there is no vaccine for ETEC. One candidate vaccine antigen, EtpA, is a conserved secreted adhesin that binds to the tips of flagellae to bridge ETEC to host intestinal glycans. EtpA is exported through a Gram-negative, two-partner secretion system (TPSS, type Vb) comprised of the secreted EtpA passenger (TpsA) protein and EtpB (TpsB) transporter that is integrated into the outer bacterial membrane. TpsA proteins share a conserved, N-terminal TPS domain followed by an extensive C-terminal domain with …

Mitochondrial Reactivity Following Acute Exposure To Experimental Pain Testing In People With Hiv And Chronic Pain, Shannon R Gilstrap, Joanna M Hobson, Michael A Owens, Dyan M White, Melissa J Sammy, Scott Ballinger, Robert E Sorge, Burel R Goodin

2020-Current year OA Pubs

No abstract provided.

Controversies And Progress On Standardization Of Large-Scale Brain Network Nomenclature, Lucina Q. Uddin, Evan M. Gordon, Et Al.

2020-Current year OA Pubs

Progress in scientific disciplines is accompanied by standardization of terminology. Network neuroscience, at the level of macroscale organization of the brain, is beginning to confront the challenges associated with developing a taxonomy of its fundamental explanatory constructs. The Workgroup for HArmonized Taxonomy of NETworks (WHATNET) was formed in 2020 as an Organization for Human Brain Mapping (OHBM)-endorsed best practices committee to provide recommendations on points of consensus, identify open questions, and highlight areas of ongoing debate in the service of moving the field toward standardized reporting of network neuroscience results. The committee conducted a survey to catalog current practices in …

Evaluation Of Gliovascular Functions Of Aqp4 Readthrough Isoforms, Shayna M Mueller, Kelli Mcfarland White, Stuart B Fass, Siyu Chen, Zhan Shi, Xia Ge, John A Engelbach, Seana H Gaines, Annie R Bice, Michael J Vasek, Joel R Garbow, Joseph P Culver, Zila Martinez-Lozada, Martine Cohen-Salmon, Joseph D Dougherty, Darshan Sapkota

2020-Current year OA Pubs

Aquaporin-4 (AQP4) is a water channel protein that links the astrocytic endfeet to the blood-brain barrier (BBB) and regulates water and potassium homeostasis in the brain, as well as the glymphatic clearance of waste products that would otherwise potentiate neurological diseases. Recently, translational readthrough was shown to generate a C-terminally extended variant of AQP4, known as AQP4x, which preferentially localizes around the BBB through interaction with the scaffolding protein α-syntrophin, and loss of AQP4x disrupts waste clearance from the brain. To investigate the function of AQP4x, we generated a novel AQP4 mouse line (AllX) to increase relative levels of the …

Severe Central Nervous System Demyelination In Sanfilippo Disease, Mahsa Taherzadeh, Erjun Zhang, Irene Londono, Benjamin De Leener, Sophie Wang, Jonathan D Cooper, Timothy E Kennedy, Carlos R Morales, Zesheng Chen, Gregory A Lodygensky, Alexey V Pshezhetsky

2020-Current year OA Pubs

INTRODUCTION: Chronic progressive neuroinflammation is a hallmark of neurological lysosomal storage diseases, including mucopolysaccharidosis III (MPS III or Sanfilippo disease). Since neuroinflammation is linked to white matter tract pathology, we analyzed axonal myelination and white matter density in the mouse model of MPS IIIC

METHODS: Brain and spinal cord tissues of human MPS III patients, 6-month-old

RESULTS: Analyses of CC and spinal cord tissues by immunohistochemistry revealed substantially reduced levels of myelin-associated proteins including Myelin Basic Protein, Myelin Associated Glycoprotein, and Myelin Oligodendrocyte Glycoprotein. Furthermore, ultrastructural analyses revealed disruption of myelin sheath organization and reduced myelin thickness in the brains …

Machine Learning Pipelines Developed For The Prediction Of Cancelation Of Inappropriate Parathyroid Hormone-Related Peptide Orders Demonstrate Poor Performance In Predicting Provider Behavior, Nicholas C. Spies, Christopher W. Farnsworth, Ronald Jackups, Mark A. Zaydman

2020-Current year OA Pubs

No abstract provided.

Evaluating The Efficacy Of Purchased Antisense Oligonucleotides To Reduce Mouse And Human Tau In Vivo, Pranav Vemula, Kathleen M Schoch, Timothy M Miller

2020-Current year OA Pubs

Many preclinical and clinical studies support the use of antisense oligonucleotides (ASOs) as effective therapeutic strategies. However, acquiring ASOs for research purposes may be limited by partnerships with the pharmaceutical companies. Our lab previously developed an effective ASO strategy to lower human tau and reverse pathology in aged tauopathy model mice. Testing the efficacy of purchased tau lowering ASOs would provide support for these reagents as broad research tools. Purchased mouse and human tau lowering ASOs were infused or injected intracerebroventricularly into wildtype and tau transgenic mice. Following treatment, brain tissue evaluated for ASO distribution and levels of tau mRNA, …

Relationship Between Baseline Plasma P-Tau181 And Longitudinal Changes In Cognition And Structural Brain Measures In A Cohort Of Cognitively Unimpaired Older Adults, Marcos V Pais, Chia-Ling Kuo, Beau M Ances, Julie Loebach Wetherell, Eric J Lenze, Breno S Diniz

2020-Current year OA Pubs

INTRODUCTION: Preclinical Alzheimer's disease (AD) affects a significant proportion of cognitively unimpaired (CU) older adults. Currently, blood-based biomarkers detect very early changes in the AD continuum with great accuracy.

METHODS: We measured baseline plasma phosphorylated tau (p-tau)181 using electrochemiluminescence (ECL)-based assay (MesoScale Discovery) in 533 CU older adults. Follow-up lasted up to 18 months. Cognitive performance assessment included memory and cognitive control. Structural brain measures included cortical thickness, which includes the AD magnetic resonance imaging (AD MRI) signature, and hippocampal volume.

RESULTS: In this cohort of CU older adults, baseline plasma p-tau181 levels were not associated with short-term changes in …