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Zika Virus Modulates Arthropod Histone Methylation For Its Survival In Mosquito Cells, Telvin Harrell

Biological Sciences Faculty Publications

Zika virus (ZIKV) is a mosquito-borne human pathogen that causes mild febrile illness in adults and severe neurological complications and microcephaly in newborns. Studies have reported that ZIKV modulates methylation of human and viral RNA critical for its replication in vertebrate cells. In this study, we show that ZIKV modulates mosquito S-adenosyl methionine (SAMe)-synthase, an enzyme involved in the production of SAMe (methyl donor), and histone methylation for its survival in mosquito cells. Reverse transcription quantitative PCR followed by immunoblotting analysis showed increased amounts of SAMe synthase at both RNA and protein levels, respectively, in C6/36 mosquito cells infected with …

Addressing The Productivity-Susceptibility Analysis In Data-Limited Fisheries For Understudied Fish In The Marine Aquarium Trade, Alice Wynn, Jemelyn Baldisimo, Gabrielle Baillargeon, Michael Tlusty, Andrew Rhyne

Biological Sciences Faculty Publications

The marine aquarium trade (MAT) harvests millions of coral reef fishes from the wild yearly. While the MAT supports fishers, hobbyists and marine education, harvested fishes are crucial in maintaining coral reef health and balanced marine cycles within their native habitats. Understanding the impact of the MAT on fish populations is critical for sustaining the trade in the long-term. Productivity-susceptibility analyses (PSAs) offer semiquantitative methods of analyzing the productive capacity of each fish stock, as well as its susceptibility to overfishing. The present study revises and expands upon a PSA conducted by Baillargeon et al. (2020) that focused on 32 …

Divergent Floral And Vegetative Trait Responses To Abiotic Factors Drive Phenotypic Diversity In Platanthera Dilatata (Orchidaceae) Across Alaska, Marlin L. Bowles, Lisa E. Wallace

Biological Sciences Faculty Publications

Multiple traits make up an integrated phenotype, but traits may be shaped by differing drivers. It is often assumed that selection by biotic agents drives floral variation, but abiotic factors are also known to influence floral traits. Understanding trait covariations and their association with diverse environmental factors is a central question in evolution and ecology. Here, we studied covariation in floral and vegetative traits in relation to climate and topo-edaphic variation in the orchid Platanthera dilatata. In Platanthera, nectar spur length is associated with pollinator tongue length, but much variation exists in other traits too, likely to be …

The Role Of Tgf-Beta Superfamily Members In Immune Homeostasis And Disease, Natalie Eva Nieuwenhuizen, Ioannis Eleftherianos, Piotr Jan Kraj, Maria Semitekolou

Biological Sciences Faculty Publications

[Introduction] The Transforming Growth Factor beta (TGF-beta) superfamily, encompassing molecules such as TGFs, activins, Bone Morphogenetic Proteins (BMPs), Growth/Differentiation Factor (GDFs) and Nodals, represents the largest family of growth and differentiation factors, playing crucial roles in developmental and physiological processes across animal species (1). These molecules are integral to tissue homeostasis and cell fate determination. Among them, TGF-beta is particularly noted for its regulatory influence on immune responses and tissue fibrosis (2, 3). Recent research has expanded our understanding of the immune functions of other superfamily members, including activin A and BMPs (4). These molecules signal through receptor complexes composed …

Squid Paralarvae Turn With High Agility Using Jets Near The Reynolds Number Threshold For Viscous Domination, Ian K. Bartol, Alissa M. Ganley, Paul S. Krueger, Joseph T. Thompson

Biological Sciences Faculty Publications

Turning is critical for survival in the ocean, as marine animals need to maneuver to capture prey, elude predators, and navigate complex environments. While prior research has focused on turning performance of adult swimmers, less is known about early ontogenetic stages that locomote within lower Reynolds number (Re) regimes, especially young jetters. To evaluate squid paralarval turning proficiency and the role of the pulsed jet in maneuvers, recently hatched longfin squid Doryteuthis pealeii swimming in a viewing chamber were studied using digital particle image velocimetry and kinematic motion analyses. Paralarvae exhibited a wide repertoire of turning behaviors, including those performed …

High Temporal Resolution Gene Expression Analysis Of Acute Heat Stress Response In Acropora Cervicornis And Porites Astreoides, Katherine Parker, Nicolas Evensen, Iliana Baums, Daniel Barshis

Biological Sciences Faculty Publications

Widespread coral bleaching and mortality events are becoming increasingly frequent due to rising ocean temperatures, though certain coral species and populations have displayed higher tolerance to elevated emperatures than others. As such, it is of high research priority to identify thermally tolerant coral populations for research and conservation and assess the biological mechanisms allowing these populations to survive exposure to higher temperatures. This research utilized the Coral Bleaching Automated Stress System (CBASS), a portable experimental aquaria system with precise temperature manipulation, to assess the thermal thresholds and heat stress response of two coral species from Summerland Key, FL, USA. Seven …

Genome-Wide Snp Analyses Reveal High Gene Flow Of Endemic Smallscale Croaker (Boesemania Microlepsis) In The Lower Mekong Basin, Quyen Dang Ha Vu, Christopher E. Bird, Oanh Thi Truong, Sang Quang Tran, Ellen E. Biesack, Amanda S. Ackiss, Kent E. Carpenter, Binh Truy Dang

Biological Sciences Faculty Publications

The Smallscale Croaker, Boesemania microlepis, is a valuable fishery resource in the Mekong River basin that lacks clear biological data to understand its basic ecology and conservation management priorities. This species is common in the southernmost floodplain of the Mekong which extends from Tonlé Sap in Cambodia to the Mekong Delta in Vietnam. This floodplain is of particular biodiversity conservation concern because of the many upstream dams that restrict water flow in an ecology that relies heavily on a flood-pulse cycle. The literature regarding the biology B. microlepis in this region contains conflicting ideas that populations are both highly …

Policy Paper On Incorporating Migrant Children In A Strengthened Public Education System, Amira Abdelaziz, Dina Ibrahim, Dunia Zaatar

Papers, Posters, and Presentations

A transit, destination, and sending country, Egypt generously hosts more than one million refugees and asylum seekers (UNHCR, 2025), in addition to several migrants estimated at nine million in 2022 (IOM, 2022). Against this backdrop, the country is currently facing growing challenges in ensuring access to quality, inclusive, and equitable primary education for migrant and refugee children, particularly following the arrival of Sudanese nationals since April 2023, when the conflict in Sudan erupted. Egypt’s new Asylum Law No. 164 of 2024 grants de jure access to basic education for all refugee children until the age of 14, yet the law …

Differential Associations Among Psychological Flexibility Components, Depressive Symptoms And Sense Of Belonging In First Semester College Students., Ti Hsu, Cristina Nardini, Gabriel M. Velez, Elizabeth Raposa

College of Education Faculty Research and Publications

Objective. The transition to college is associated with rising rates of depressive symptoms and decreased well-being. It is critical to identify protective psychological factors for this period. One possible protective factor is psychological flexibility, or the ability to pursue self-identified values despite distressing thoughts and emotions. This study examined associations among psychological flexibility components and well-being outcomes in first semester college students. Participants: The sample consisted of 238 diverse first-semester college students recruited from five universities. Method: Using structural equation modeling, we examined associations among three components of psychological flexibility and two dimensions of well-being (i.e., depressive symptoms and sense …

Switching To Tumescent Dissection In Mastectomy, Emna Bakillah, Ari Brooks, Seye Adekeye

Department of Surgery Faculty Papers

Introduction: Tumescent dissection (TUM) combines the use of crystalloid, local anesthetic, and epinephrine to create a bloodless plane to raise skin flaps. We aim to compare outcomes of TUM versus standard electrocautery dissection in mastectomies with and without reconstruction. Methods: We conducted a retrospective cohort study of patients who underwent mastectomy by a single surgeon between January 2016 and October 2020 utilizing the electronic medical record. The primary outcome was complication rate, and the secondary outcome was operative time. Chi-squared analysis and two-sample t-tests were used to examine outcomes. Results: Among 242 patients, 141 patients underwent TUM and 101 …

Endocrine Responses To Two Distinct Foraging Contexts In The Bonobo (Pan Paniscus), Lauren Mitchell

Master's Theses

In gregarious animals, a social structure characterized by female dominance is relatively rare. However, bonobos (Pan paniscus), one of the two species most closely related to humans, are characterized by partial female dominance, with females forming close social bonds. In contrast, chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes), a close relative of the bonobo, are characterized by strong male-male bonding and social dominance with female chimpanzees lacking close social bonds. There is a lack of consensus concerning the reasons for these behavioral differences in Pan, specifically, the physiological processes responsible for female dominance in bonobos. The role of hormones …

2025 Merc Annual Report, David B. Naff, Jesse Senechal, Paula L. Ogston-Nobile

MERC Publications

This is the annual report of the Metropolitan Educational Research Consortium (MERC) at Virginia Commonwealth University for the 2024-2025 academic year. It includes vignettes depicting MERC activities in the past year that align with each of its five principles: research, relevance, rigor, multiple perspectives, and impact. It concludes with a discussion of MERC's commitment moving forward.

Virginia Literacy Act Expansion: Implications For Middle Schools, Candace Bechtold, Joan A. Rhodes, Valerie J. Robnolt, David B. Naff, Kendall Hunt, Jan Collins

MERC Publications

This MERC research and policy review focuses on expansion of the Virginia Literacy Act (VLA) to include support for middle school students across the Commonwealth. It explores three questions:

1. What were trends in middle school literacy prior to the VLA expansion?
2. What state policies exist for middle school literacy achievement?
3. What does research say about literacy intervention at the middle school level?

It concludes with a series of key takeaways and recommendations for middle school literacy policy and practice.

Supporting Students In Transition To And From High School, David Naff, Jamelle Simmons, Meleah Ellison, Shelby Garofalo, Laura Thoene, Kim Dupre, Sooyeon Moon, Karli Johanson, Paul Harris, Martin Darby, William L. Parker, Tracy Booker, Janel Miley, Mysia Perry, Xun Liu, Maggie Szydlowski, Ahmed Abbas

MERC Publications

This report is part of a two-part series focused on supporting students in transition across PK-12 education. Specifically, it explores transitions into and out of high school school. The report includes a synthesis of recent peer-reviewed literature, analysis of publicly available data (with a specific focus on Virginia and the metropolitan Richmond region), and summary of relevant federal, state, and school division-level policies. It answers the following questions:

1. What are key considerations for supporting students in transition to and from high school in the MERC region?

2. How do federal, state, and division policies guide support for student transitions …

Breaking The Boomerang: Judicial Oversight And The Fourth Amendment When The War Comes Home, Benjamin K. Eldredge

Case Western Reserve Law Review

No abstract provided.

“With Love, From Me To You:” Replacing The Unconstitutional All-Comer Provision With Favorable Conflict Of Laws Principles To Still Confer The Postmortem Right Of Publicity, Jackson Polish

Case Western Reserve Law Review

No abstract provided.

Masthead, Volume 76 Issue 1 (2025)

Case Western Reserve Law Review

No abstract provided.

Tribute To Professor Kevin C. Mcmunigal, Michael J. Benza

Case Western Reserve Law Review

No abstract provided.

A Relational Approach To Public Private Contracting For Innovation: The Example Of Arpa-H, Liza Vertinsky

Case Western Reserve Law Review

No abstract provided.

Volume 76 Issue 2 (2025), Case Western Reserve Law Review

Case Western Reserve Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Growing Role Of Venture Studios In Startup Finance, David Nows, Lawrence J. Trautman

Case Western Reserve Law Review

No abstract provided.

Strengthening Critical Infrastructure For Equity And Resilience: Findings From The Environmental Justice Data Project, Nakeina E. Douglas-Glenn Phd, Luisa Nazareno Phd, Emily Schreer, Amidu Kalokoh, Curtis Brown Mpa, Melvin Brown, Yali Pang Phd, Morgan Woodle Phd, Research Institute For Social Equity Rise

Research Institute for Social Equity

In 2023, the Research Institute for Social Equity, an institute of the Virginia Commonwealth University’s L. Douglas Wilder School of Government and Public Affairs, partnered with Resilient Virginia to explore the impact of climate change and degradation due to disasters and environmental hazards on the critical infrastructure in and around historically marginalized and underserved communities in the Richmond and Southside Virginia areas. During the study period, 2023-2025, the research team conducted both primary and secondary research in three Virginia localities: Charles City County, the City of Emporia, and a portion of the City of Richmond. Secondary research included a thorough …

Interplay Between Computational Techniques And Quantum Theory: Advancing Quantum Chaos And Quantum Error Correction, Refaat Ismail

Theses and Dissertations--Physics and Astronomy

This dissertation investigates computational techniques addressing critical problems arising within quantum chaos and quantum error correction (QEC). First, we investigate quantum dynamics via the Lanczos algorithm, establishing how its computational features — branching patterns, convergence, and complexity saturation — relate to physical properties like spectral statistics and operator matrix elements. We derive a formula connecting Lanczos coefficients to spectral densities for two-branched Lanczos sequences, revealing how branching patterns encode level repulsion—a hallmark of quantum chaos. Furthermore, we develop an analytic framework predicting Krylov complexity saturation from static system properties alone. Specifically, we decompose the saturation value into a spectral density-dependent …

Laser–Assisted Free–Free (Laff) Electron Scattering: An Elastic Angular Distribution In Argon And The Use Of A Novel Pulsed-Laser Multipass System In Laff Experiments, Charles M. Weaver

Theses and Dissertations--Physics and Astronomy

Laser–assisted free–free experiments investigate the emission or absorption of photons when an electron scatters from an atom in the presence of a laser field.

We measured the relative differential cross sections for 350 eV electrons scattered by an argon target in the presence of 1.17 eV photons from a Nd:YAG laser. The angular distribution for elastically scattered 350 eV electrons was measured over scattering angles from 4◦ to 80◦. This distribution exhibits a pronounced maximum near 47◦ and is symmetric about this angle, as predicted by a Kroll–Watson approximation (KWA) calculation for the experimental kinematics. These measurements directly test a …

Quantum Hall Phases In Monolayer Graphene, Jincheng An

Theses and Dissertations--Physics and Astronomy

In the presence of a perpendicular magnetic field, monolayer graphene at and near charge neutrality forms a quantum Hall ferromagnet—a correlated electronic state where the interplay of interactions, spin, and valley degrees of freedom leads to spontaneous symmetry breaking. While the dominant Coulomb interaction has $SU(4)$ symmetry, the ground state is ultimately determined by subdominant terms: residual lattice-scale anisotropic interactions, Zeeman, and sublattice couplings. Relaxing the ultra-short-range limit of anisotropic interactions unveils diverse symmetry-breaking phases in both integer and fractional quantum Hall regimes. Haldane pseudopotentials, which quantify interactions between particle pairs with fixed relative angular momentum, provide a readily parameterizable …

Diet And Migration In The Prehistoric Populations In The Greater Nicoya Region Of Nicaragua, Ashley Nichols Whitten

Theses and Dissertations--Anthropology

The goal of this three-paper dissertation was to engage with the archaeological hypotheses of prehistoric migration from Mesoamerica into the Greater Nicoya Region of Nicaragua. To that aim, this dissertation contains a discussion on the current information supporting and refuting the migratory hypotheses. New data is also presented in the form of stable isotope analysis and bioarcheological analysis of dentition from prehistoric archaeological sites in Pacific Nicaragua.

The first paper titled “Prehistoric Foodways and Migration Hypotheses in the Greater Nicoya Region of Nicaragua” outlines the current available research concerning migration out of Mesoamerica into Pacific Nicaragua. The potential migration is …

Free Food And The Fabric Of Need: Moralized And Institutionalized Care Within Kentucky Charitable Food Programs, Alisha D. Mays

Theses and Dissertations--Anthropology

This dissertation offers a critical ethnographic examination of hunger and charitable food programs (CFPs) in rural Eastern Kentucky, situated within the broader political economy of welfare retrenchment and neoliberal governance in the United States. Through multi-sited fieldwork spanning food pantries, mutual aid networks, state and federal partner agencies, and the regional food bank system, I analyze how hunger is experienced, managed, and framed by clients, volunteers, and organizational staff.

This work uses qualitative methods to weave the lived experiences across intersecting charitable food systems; this dissertation contributes to economic anthropology by illuminating the relational and political dimensions of hunger in …

Regional Authority And Economic Interaction In The Eastern Lower Papaloapan Basin, Veracruz, Mexico, Shayna Skye Lindquist

Theses and Dissertations--Anthropology

This dissertation examines various networks of interaction underlying political and economic organization through a series of three papers that investigate the Eastern Lower Papaloapan Basin (ELPB), Veracruz, Mexico. The three papers are linked through their shared concern with a reliance on models of political economies that fall short in capturing the diverse and nuanced ways individuals and groups cooperated. While my primary focus is on the Early Classic period (AD 300-600), I engaged diverse datasets that provide context from which the ELPB’s Classic period societies emerged. The first two papers present the results of technological and geochemical analyses of obsidian …

Scalable Mental Health Analysis Using Big Data: A Demographic And Geographic Study Of Depressive Symptoms, Saikrishna Katamneni, Anitha Bommana, Naman Pandya, Gokul Kareti, Sangwhan Cha

Harrisburg University Other Works

This project explores the application of Big Data technologies for large-scale mental health analysis, focusing on the prevalence of depressive disorder symptoms across diverse demographic and geographic subgroups. Utilizing Apache Spark on Google Cloud Dataproc, the system efficiently processed millions of survey records stored in Hadoop Distributed File System (HDFS). Through comprehensive data preprocessing, aggregation, and visualization, the analysis revealed critical trends and disparities in mental health outcomes related to age, race, education level, gender, and state. Seasonal variations and subgroup-specific confidence intervals were also examined to identify high-risk populations and areas of measurement uncertainty. The results offer actionable insights …

Readmission Prediction For Diabetic Patients: A Scalable Big Data Approach For Resource-Constrained Hospitals, Rhema Ike, Minjae Kim, Bhushan Chindarkar, Sangwhan Cha

Harrisburg University Other Works

Hospital readmissions, particularly among diabetic patients, place a significant burden on healthcare systems by increasing operational costs and straining limited resources. This project presents a scalable, cloud-based solution that leverages machine learning and big data analytics to predict 30-day hospital readmissions. Utilizing a ten-year dataset of over 100,000 patient records, we implemented a Random Forest classifier trained on clinical, demographic, and hospitalization data. The system architecture integrates Google Cloud Platform services—including BigQuery, Vertex AI, and Looker Studio—with a custom Python/Flask web application for real-time data input and inference. Data preprocessing and feature engineering were conducted in Vertex AI Workbench, enabling …