Digital Commons Network^™

Climate Mitigation Through Biological Conservation: Extensive And Valuable Blue Carbon Natural Capital In Tristan Da Cunha’S Giant Marine Protected Zone, David K.A. Barnes, James B. Bell, Amelia E. Bridges, Louise Ireland, Kerry L. Howell, Stephanie M. Martin, Chester J. Sands, Soto A Mora, Terri Souster, Gareth Flint, Simon A. Morley

School of Biological and Marine Sciences

Carbon-rich habitats can provide powerful climate mitigation if meaningful protection is put in place. We attempted to quantify this around the Tristan da Cunha archipelago Marine Protected Area. Its shallows (<1000 m depth) are varied and productive. The 5.4 km2 of kelp stores ~60 tonnes of carbon (tC) and may export ~240 tC into surrounding depths. In deep-waters we analysed seabed data collected from three research cruises, including seabed mapping, camera imagery, seabed oceanography and benthic samples from mini-Agassiz trawl. Rich biological assemblages on seamounts significantly differed to the islands and carbon storage had complex drivers. We estimate ~2.3 million tC are stored in benthic biodiversity of waters <1000 m, which includes >0.22 million tC that can be sequestered (the proportion of the carbon captured that is expected to become buried in sediment or locked away in skeletal tissue for at least 100 years). Much of this carbon is captured by cold-water coral reefs as a mixture of inorganic (largely calcium carbonate) and organic compounds. As part of its 2020 Marine Protection Strategy, these deep-water reef systems are now protected by …

Female Puma (Puma Concolor) Highway Crossings In The Yucatan Peninsula, Carlos A. López González, Fernanda Cruz Torres, Mircea G. Hidalgo Mihart

Western North American Naturalist

Human infrastructure, particularly highway infrastructure, has proven to be a hazard for the resilience of large felid populations throughout the world. The Yucatan Peninsula is no exception and is presently confronted with the establishment of the “Tren Maya,” a continental railway that will reshape the road network of the peninsula. We describe 12 successful crossings of a 4-lane highway on the peninsula by a female puma (Puma concolor) fitted with a GPS radio-transmitter. The median time between sequential locations was 24 h (range 8–56 h), and the average number of days between crossings was 4.33 (SD = 2.50). …

Robotic Olfactory-Based Navigation With Mobile Robots, Lingxiao Wang

Doctoral Dissertations and Master's Theses

Robotic odor source localization (OSL) is a technology that enables mobile robots or autonomous vehicles to find an odor source in unknown environments. It has been viewed as challenging due to the turbulent nature of airflows and the resulting odor plume characteristics. The key to correctly finding an odor source is designing an effective olfactory-based navigation algorithm, which guides the robot to detect emitted odor plumes as cues in finding the source. This dissertation proposes three kinds of olfactory-based navigation methods to improve search efficiency while maintaining a low computational cost, incorporating different machine learning and artificial intelligence methods.

A. …

Family Planning And Its Limits, Dov Fox

The Journal of Contemporary Legal Issues

A doctor botches a vasectomy. Or says it’d be dangerous to keep a healthy pregnancy. Or misses a risk of passing along disease. Our laws do little to deter such reproductive negligence or compensate its victims. Some of this misconduct leaves people without the baby they desperately want. Other times, it foists on parents a child they’d set out to avoid. Or one with meaningfully different traits than what they were led to believe.

I call these three harms procreation deprived, procreation imposed, and procreation confounded.

Thousands of fertility patients were deprived of biological parenthood when their …

Design And Development Of A Mobile Health (Mhealth) Platform For Dementia Prevention In The Prevention Of Dementia By Mobile Phone Applications (Prodemos) Project, Melanie Hafdi, Esmé Eggink, Marieke P. Hoevenaar-Blom, M. Patrick Witvliet, Sandrine Andrieu, Linda Barnes, Carol Brayne, Rachael Brooks, Nicola Coley, Jean Georges, Abraham Van Der Groep, Harm Van Marwijk, Mark Van Der Meijden, Libin Song, Manshu Song, Youxin Wang, Wenzhi Wang, Wei Wang, Anders Wimo, Xiaoyan Ye, Eric P. Moll Van Charante, Edo Richard, Prodemos Consortium

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

Background:

Mobile health (mHealth) has the potential to bring preventive healthcare within reach of populations with limited access to preventive services, by delivering personalized support at low cost. Although numerous mHealth interventions are available, very few have been developed following an evidence-based rationale or have been tested for efficacy. This article describes the systematic development of a coach-supported mHealth application to improve healthy lifestyles for the prevention of dementia and cardiovascular disease in the United Kingdom (UK) and China.

Methods:

Development of the Prevention of Dementia by Mobile Phone applications (PRODEMOS) platform built upon the experiences with the Healthy Aging …

Ecological Exposure And Effects Of Microplastics In Crabs Along The Pacific Coast, Dorothy A. Horn

Dissertations and Theses

Microplastics have been documented across the global oceans as an ubiquitous pollutant. Found in the water column, sediment, shorelines, estuaries, freshwater streams and rivers along with terrestrial soils, flora and fauna. The continuous input of plastic waste into the marine environment doesn't seem to be slowing as the amount of plastic created each year increases globally.

This study investigated (1) the effects of microplastic ingestion in the indicator species, the Pacific mole crab (Emerita analoga), testing the predator avoidance behavior, reproductive output and parasitism effects when an adult female gravid crab had ingested microplastics (2) adult mortality, hatching …

Correlating Sentiment In Reddit’S Wallstreetbets With The Stock Market Using Machine Learning Techniques, Sultan Ali Alzaabi

Theses

The issue that this study addresses is to observe whether there exists a statistical relation between the stock market and Reddit’s wallstreetbets. Previous research mainly focused on the relation between the stock market and Twitter. To gather data for the study, comments were scrapped from the subreddit wallstreetbets for a period of four months, Jan 1, 2021, till April 30, 2021. Different sentiment classifiers were, then, applied on a sample of the data to observe the most accurate classifier for the study. The study concluded that the most accurate sentiment classifier was an SVM classifier trained on 80% of Reddit …

Management Of Meadow Fescue Pasture For High-Producing Dairy Cows In Northern Japan, K. Sudo, K. Ochiai, T. Ikeda

IGC Proceedings (1977-2023)

The objective of this study was to establish an intensive grazing system of meadow fescue (Festuca elatior L.) pasture for high-producing dairy cows in some areas of Japan where soil freezes in winter. Plant succession of meadow fescue pastures that had been grazed at different plant heights and milk production from cows grazed on meadow fescue pasture compared to that from cows grazed on perennial ryegrass pasture were surveyed over a five year period. Succession of meadow fescue pasture depended on the management of plant height before grazing use. Milk production from cows grazed on meadow fescue pasture was …

Leaf Blade Selection By Sheep In Kleingrass (Panicum Coloratum L.) Pastures With Different Deferment Periods, P. Sierra, M. S. Cid, M. A. Brizuela, C. M. Ferri

IGC Proceedings (1977-2023)

The winter use of standing dead biomass produced by warm season grasses during the previous growing season may be an alternative to grazing systems in the semi-arid Pampean Region of Argentina. This study evaluated: 1) the effect of different deferment periods on the leaf blade percentage and quality of ‘kleingrass’ (Panicum coloratum L.), a warm season specie recently introduced to that region, and 2) whether rams grazing the vegetation accumulated during these different periods are able to select leaf blades to maintain the quality of their diets. It was generated three treatments by deferment of the forage produced after …

Microhistological Estimation Of Leaf Blade Percentage In Diets From Monoespecific Pastures, P. Sierra, M. S. Cid, M. A. Brizuela, C. M. Ferri

IGC Proceedings (1977-2023)

Although a decrease in the leaf-stem ratio affects the nutritive value of pastures, herbivores can reinforce selection for leaf blades to maintain the quality of their diets. This study evaluated whether the percentage of fragments with furrows in blades could be used to estimate the relative intake of this part of the leaves by herbivores grazing monoespecific pastures. It was worked with vegetation of kleingrass (Panicum coloratum L.) from paddocks with three deferment periods. Blade samples, and different plant part mixtures hand compounded were in vitro digested. The digestion residues were microhistological analyzed determining the number of fragment with …

Evaluation Of Kentucky Bluegrass (Poa Pratensis L.) For Creating Sustainable Grazing Swards In Hokkaido, T. Saigusa, S. Tejima, Y. Ogawa, S. Takahashi

IGC Proceedings (1977-2023)

Kentucky bluegrass (Poa pratensis L.) is generally considered to be a weed in the meadows of Hokkaido. However, a revaluation of this species should be undertaken in terms of its useful characteristics for labor-saving management on farms in marginal areas. The performance of steers (Holstein-Friesian) and botanical composition of Kentucky bluegrass swards were investigated under the stocking methods of set and rotational grazing and compared with timothy (Phleum pratense L.) swards. Kentucky bluegrass was stable over the grazing season under both methods, although timothy decreased rapidly. The average daily gain of steers raised on Kentucky bluegrass swards was …

Accuracy Of Routine 2d Echocardiography To Estimate Pda Type And Dimension And Predict Device Selection For Successful Pda Occlusion, Mohammed Omar Galal, Zaheer Ahmed, Arif Hussain, Masroor Sharfi, Yahia El Mahdi, Fayzah El Khattab, Amjad Alkouatli, Riad Abou Zahr

Journal of the Saudi Heart Association

Background: Assessment of the shape and dimensions of PDA is usually done angiographically and in the majority of cases need arterial access. Our aim was to evaluate the value of routine 2 D echocardiography (ECHO) in predicting type, dimensions of PDA and to anticipate device size to be used during the intervention. Material and Methods: The charts of all patients who underwent transcatheter closure of PDA between January 2015 and December 2020 were reviewed. Their pre-procedure ECHO and catheterization details at the time of device closure were analyzed. Results: Total of 139 patients were reviewed and 8 were excluded because …

More Than Just Cataloging, In Three Acts: Reflections, Adrian Applin, Regina Carra, Sarah Nguyen

Urban Library Journal

This article contains proceedings from a performance-presentation at the 2021 LACUNY Institute called “More Than Just Cataloging, In Three Acts.” It features three performing artist-librarians, showcasing dance, music, and theatre while reflecting on connections between the performing arts and the information professions. Accompanying performance footage shared at the Institute is referenced in this article.

Take That Covid! Positive Documents Emerging From The Museum Sector, Kiersten F. Latham, Katherine F. Jaede

Proceedings from the Document Academy

Although the field of museology has discussed many concepts found in other positive disciplines, such as flow in positive psychology, the field itself has not yet developed a purposeful framework for positive museology. A long history of research in museum studies and on museal endeavors reveals aspects of a positive approach already exist but have yet to be woven together into a synthetic whole. In 2020-2021, during the COVID-19 pandemic, museums themselves showed their positive strengths and virtues through documents such as social media and field-wide communication, revealing their capacity for a positive approach. This paper uses a developing framework …

A Nation In Crisis... In Three Acts, William D. Senn

Proceedings from the Document Academy

A dramatic, spoken-word performance based on a detailed examination of the text of more than 1.7 million tweets concerning coronavirus and covid that were sent during the hours surrounding the president's declaration of emergency on March 13, 2020 including the transcript of the remarks made at the Rose Garden press conference. The researcher used the Twitter JSON API to retrieve all of the tweets containing the search terms "covid" and "corona" occurring during the timeframe. A text analysis was performed to identify the most frequently occurring n-grams present in the corpus of tweets. Thematic analysis and sentiment analysis were used …

Modeling Deception: A Case Study Of Email Phishing, Abdullah Almoqbil, Brian C. O'Connor, Richard Anderson, Jibril Shittu, Patrick Mcleod

Proceedings from the Document Academy

Information manipulation for deception continues to evolve at a remarkable rate. Artificial intelligence has greatly reduced the burden of combing through documents for evidence of manipulation; but it has also enabled the development of clever modes of deception.

In this study, we modeled deception attacks by examining phishing emails that successfully evaded detection by the Microsoft 365 filtering system. The sample population selected for this study was the University of North Texas students, faculty, staff, alumni and retirees who maintain their university email accounts. The model explains why certain individuals and organizations are selected as targets, and identifies potential counter …

Emergence: Documents In Crisis, Wayne De Fremery

Proceedings from the Document Academy

This essay suggests the etymologies of emergence, emergency, and crisis create a useful framework for theorizing documents. Indeed, the overlapping semantic associations of the words allow for the idea that documents emerge in crisis. The semantic overlap also allows a means for theorizing how documents descend into crisis. Theorizing documents in crisis, the essay argues, usefully complements documentalist theories of documentary representation suggested by thinkers like Paul Otlet and Suzanne Briet, as well newer conceptualizations of documentality as conceived by Michael Buckland and Maurizio Ferraris and documentarity as described by Ronald Day.

Bringing Political Upheaval And Cultural Trauma Into Order: A Document-Theoretical Approach To The Social Significance Of Bibliographic Classification Systems, Joacim Hansson

Proceedings from the Document Academy

This paper explores the ability to define bibliographic classification systems as socially significant documents in a way that goes beyond their immediate function in the information retrieval process. It does so in dialog with theory on documents and documentality, and knowledge organization theory. Two examples show how development of new classification systems address social and cultural structures in periods of rapid social and cultural change and crisis. The first example discusses the design of a classification system for Swedish public libraries in the late 1910s, and the second addresses the re-formulation of the Holocaust experience in American Jewish library classification …

Cultural Warrant And Hospitality In Animation Film Abstracting, Admeire Sundström

Proceedings from the Document Academy

In the Brazilian context, we lack a methodology for abstracting audiovisual documents. To address this, several authors have proposed different approaches. As an additional contribution, this research proposes cultural warrant and hospitality as a principle that could be considered during the abstracting of animation. Domain analysis was used as a method, and from the analyzed animation institutions we identified the discursive community and the institutional proposals. From the literature reviewed, the existing approach for abstracting was identified and named here as the document dimension. As a result, we concluded that the principle of cultural warrant and hospitality needs more theoretical …

Tailoring Explosive Ordnance Risk Education: How Mag Addresses Gender/Cultural Sensitivities And Local Risk-Taking Behavior, Sebastian Kasack

The Journal of Conventional Weapons Destruction

The relevance of risk education is widely acknowledged as reflected in the Oslo Action Plan (OAP) with its distinct chapter on ‘Mine risk education and reduction’ and five explicit actions. Good risk education must be tailored. MAG’s experience delivering explosive ordnance risk education (EORE) in four-teen countries confirms the relevance of tailoring EORE to the local reality: to people’s risk taking behaviors, to the actual explosive ordnance (EO) threat, to seasonality, availability of people for risk education sessions, and approaches that re-spect gender and diversity and take conflict sensitivity into account.

Hidden Crisis In Borno State, Sean Sutton

The Journal of Conventional Weapons Destruction

At the end of 2019, Nigeria reported a significant increase of landmine, explosive remnants of war (ERW), and improvised explosive device (IED) contamination in its states. In 2019 alone, a total of 239 known mine casualties were recorded in Nigeria. Although the exact amount of contamination in Nigeria today is unknown, the Landmine & Cluster Munition Monitor asserts that Borno is the most heavily affected state in the country. Due to mounting mine contamination and increasing pressure from non-state armed groups (NSAG), internally displaced persons (IDPs) and communities are unable to safely return to the region. Extensive landmine use by …

Bullying In The C-Suite: A Nurse Leader Perspective, Kimberly Ann Colonnelli

Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) Projects

An estimated 35% of American workers have experienced bullying, and in 80% of those situations, the perpetrator was a supervisor or boss. 1 However, the reality is that bullying can come from anyone in the workplace, including subordinates. Victims are generally well liked and good performers, making them feel like threats to a bully’s power base. Bullying, unlike harassment, is not a legally defined behavior, so no laws currently exist to punish it. Victims are, therefore, at the mercy of their bosses, supervisors, co-workers, and human resource departments for protection or relief. Bullying is not a singular event, but rather …

Flavonoids Reduce Lipid Peroxides And Increase Glutathione Levels In Pooled Human Liver Microsomes (Hlms), William Yaw Boadi, Camille Stevenson, Dontrez Johnson, Mohamed Adel Mohamed

Chemistry Faculty Research

The effects of each of the flavonoids; genistein (G), quercetin (Q) and kaempferol (K) at several doses on lipid peroxides (LP) and reduced glutathione (GSH) in pooled human liver microsomes (HLMs) were investigated following the oxidative damage for 4, 6, 18 and 24 hr. HLMs (1 mg/ml) were exposed to each of the above flavonoids at 0, 5, 10, 15, 20 or 25 μM and incubated for the respective times as previously stated. Our hypothesis was that HLMs exposed to the flavonoids for the respective exposure times can decrease LP and increase GSH in HLMs to better cope with the …

December 15, 2021 Agenda, A-State Staff Senate

Staff Senate Minutes

No abstract provided.

Moderate Prenatal Ethanol Exposure, Sex, And Housing Modify Spatial Navigation Behavior And Hippocampal Cell Firing In Adult Rodents, Christy Magcalas

Psychology ETDs

Prenatal alcohol exposure (PAE) is associated with structural and physiological changes that impact the central nervous system and can result in persistent negative consequences in a broad spectrum of cognitive and behavioral domains including deficits in spatial learning and memory and behavioral flexibility. The current study focuses on examining the behavioral and mechanistic consequences of PAE, sex and housing. Rats were tested in the Morris Water Task where they were trained to navigate to a goal location and tested in a pool shift manipulation. There were no significant differences between PAE treatment, sex, or housing groups during training, but there …

Juvenile Alewife (Alosa Pseudoharengus) Feeding Habits, Movement And Residency In A Northern Temperate Estuary, Amy E. Webb

All Student Scholarship

River herring is a term applied collectively to both alewife, Alosa pseudoharengus, and blueback herring, A. aestivalis, anadromous fish that spend most of their life in the ocean and migrate upriver to freshwater to spawn each spring (NEFSC 2006). Juveniles spend their first summer in freshwater and are thought to migrate to the ocean in fall, where they remain until they are sexually mature and ready to spawn (three to five years; ASMFC 2012).

Lwd Belize: A Case Study For A Rapid Growth Community During The Terminal Classic Period In The Maya Lowlands, Rafael Alfredo Guerra

Anthropology ETDs

This dissertation examines the rise of Lower Dover (LWD) a Late Classic Polity in the middle Belize River Valley (BRV)in the Central Maya Lowlands, Belize. LWD was advantageously situated at the confluence of three important waters ways in the middle BRV to control riverine trade from the coast to the interior Maya heartland. Most large Maya centers developed over many centuries from Preclassic (ca. 400 BC) farming villages to polity capitals. LWD emerged in the Late Classic (ca. 600 AD) as many polities in the BRV were in decline. LWD was rapidly built by local elites and filled a power …

Emergence: Documents In Crisis, Wayne De Fremery

Barowsky School of Business | Faculty Scholarship

This essay suggests the etymologies of emergence, emergency, and crisis create a useful framework for theorizing documents. Indeed, the overlapping semantic associations of the words allow for the idea that documents emerge in crisis. The semantic overlap also allows a means for theorizing how documents descend into crisis. Theorizing documents in crisis, the essay argues, usefully complements documentalist theories of documentary representation suggested by thinkers like Paul Otlet and Suzanne Briet, as well newer conceptualizations of documentality as conceived by Michael Buckland and Maurizio Ferraris and documentarity as described by Ronald Day.

Il-4i1 Regulation Of Immune Protection During Mycobacterium Tuberculosis Infection., Lerato Hlaka, Mumin Ozturk, Julius E Chia, Shelby-Sara Jones, Shandre Pillay, Sibongiseni K L Poswayo, Thabo Mpotje, Justin K Nono, Simphiwe R N Simelane, Suraj P Parihar, Sugata Roy, Harukazu Suzuki, Frank Brombacher, Reto Guler

Faculty Research 2021

BACKGROUND: Interleukin 4 (IL-4i1)-induced gene 1 encodes L-phenylalanine oxidase that catabolizes phenylalanine into phenylpyruvate. IL-4i1 is mainly expressed by antigen-presenting cells (APCs), inhibits T-cell proliferation, regulates B-cell activation, modulates T cell responses, and drives macrophage polarization, but its role in bacterial infections is understudied.

METHODS: We evaluated IL-4i1 deletion in macrophages and mice on infection with virulent H37Rv and W-Beijing lineage hypervirulent HN878 Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb) strains. The bacterial growth and proinflammatory responses were measured in vitro and in vivo. Histopathological analysis, lung immune cell recruitment, and macrophage activation were assessed at the early and chronic stages of Mtb infection. …

Measuring Science Teachers' Emotional Experiences With Evolution Using Real World Scenarios, William Lee Romine, Rutuja Mahajan, Amber Todd

Biological Sciences Faculty Publications

Low acceptance of evolution remains an obstacle to quality biology instruction. We develop and utilize a novel assessment which measures emotional experience in light of real-world evolution education scenarios. We presented 296 science teachers 4 pro-evolution and 8 anti-evolution scenarios and asked them to rate their levels of joy, anger, sadness, fear, disgust, shame, and guilt elicited by that scenario on an ordinal 5-point scale. We used exploratory factor analysis to extract the most important dimensions in the teachers’ responses, Rasch analysis to explore the validity of the extracted subscales, and stepwise regression to find the most important factors driving …