Digital Commons Network^™

Faculty’S Role In Creating A (Remote) Sense Of Community Among Faculty And Facilitating Contexts Of Care For Students, Jesus R. Nunez, Jesus Cisneros, Isela Pena

Higher Learning Research Communications

Objectives: This qualitative study employed a sensemaking approach to understand faculty members’ sensemaking of their roles during the COVID-19 pandemic and the emergency transition to remote teaching and learning.

Methods: An email invitation to participate in the study was sent to faculty who taught in an MBA program during both the 2019–2020 and 2020–2021 academic school years. Data were collected through in-depth, semi-structured interviews with 14 faculty members who self-selected to participate in the study.

Results: Two salient themes emerged from the research: creating a (remote) sense of community among faculty and facilitating contexts of care for students. These …

The Evolution Of Bipedalism In Phylogenetic And Environmental Contexts, Yeganeh Sekhavati

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

Bipedalism is a key human adaptation, making its evolution a central topic in biological anthropology. To meet the mechanical demands of bipedalism, the human foot evolved significantly. This research examines the evolutionary patterns and selective histories that have shaped foot evolution in hominins and great apes. Additionally, it analyzes the environmental conditions under which hominin feet evolved. The results suggest that the last common ancestor of humans and chimpanzees exhibited adaptations for terrestrial heel strike plantigrady and vertical climbing. Early hominin foot adaptations involved eversion and midfoot stability. The Paranthropus and the Australopithecus africanus + A. sediba clades revealed arboreal …

Diagnostic Evaluation Of Palpitations In Obstetric Triage, Annslee J. Lowe, Anna Shields

InterProfessional Education Research and Scholarship

Palpitations are a common reason for pregnant patients to pursue medical evaluation. The range of etiologies that can contribute to palpitations is broad and includes life-threatening causes, while the physiologic changes in systemic hemodynamics that occur in pregnancy add further complexity to medical decision making in obstetric (OB) triage. While the literature suggests that diagnostic evaluation of palpitations in pregnant patients does not meaningfully differ from that of non-pregnant patients, many OB triage providers experience uncertainty in working up palpitations in pregnancy. Within University of New Mexico Hospital (UNMH) OB Triage, underlying causes for uncertainty were assessed and found to …

Offering A Handshake In The Post-Covid World, Konstantin N. Konstantinov, Antonios H. Tzamaloukas, Nikifor K. Konstantinov

InterProfessional Education Research and Scholarship

Keynote Presentation

Chemical And Physical Properties Of Fine Fractions From A Village Proximate To A Uranium Mine: Insights About Soil Health, Mary P. Haley

Nanoscience and Microsystems ETDs

Thousands of abandoned uranium mines (AUM) in Native American tribal lands have not been fully remediated, leaving uranium mine wastes exposed and accessible for potential erosion and transport by wind. Analyzing the metal and organic content of the fine-grained fractions in soils could uncover the impact of mine legacy on the soil health in communities that live in proximity to AUM. This study investigates the physical and chemical properties of the fine-grained fraction (μm) of soils to quantify the effect of heavy metal-bearing particulates on the soil health in the village of Paguate and within the Jackpile-Paguate AUM located on …

Sand, Ice, And X-Rays: Developing Xct Methods For Frozen Samples And Refining Siliciclastic Facies Models For Perennially Ice-Covered Lakes, Utilizing Cores From Lake Fryxell, Mcmurdo Dry Valleys, Antarctica, Holly M. Levett

Earth and Planetary Sciences ETDs

Sedimentation in perennially ice-covered lakes (PICLs) is proposed to be bi-modal, with mud deposited by stream inflow and sand deposited on the ice cover by aeolian processes and then melting through by absorption of solar radiation. Here, we consider Lake Fryxell, a PICL in the McMurdo Dry Valleys, and several lake bed cores about 30 cm in length, to better understand PICL facies through time, using micro X-ray CT (XCT). Using XCT images along with sieve and laser granulometry data, we constrained the grain-size of PICL deposits to dominantly medium / fine sand with a coarse component. The presence of …

Critical Geospatial Data Science: Principles For Curating, Analyzing, And Sharing Geospatial Data, Daniel Beene

Geography ETDs

Critical geospatial data science (CGDS) offers principles for engaging with geospatial data, methods, and translation by pulling from critical epistemologies in geography. CGDS interrogates objective “truths” in science by actively engaging in critique of geospatial data and methodologies. Specifically, CGDS contends with the political context and motivations behind geospatial data science (GDS) while using GDS methods to understand how social-spatial arrangements manifest and are reinforced through data. CGDS explicitly aims to inform practices for criticality from within GDS and provides opportunities for multidisciplinary research that incorporates social theories, contextualizes geospatial data, and critically evaluates the effects and ethics of (under)representation …

Functional And Structural Analysis Of The Neimann-Pick Disease Type C Pathway To Include Caveolin-1, Anthony Michael Seat

Chemistry and Chemical Biology ETDs

Human disease is often thought of as an all or nothing prospect, either one has the disease or one does not. This does not bear out in clinical or personal experiences, instead demonstrating that disease occurs within a spectrum ranging from presumed unaffected to demonstrably and detrimentally affected.Neimann-Pick disease is one example of this spectrum look into diseased states, with multiple named versions of a phenotypically similar disease. We focus on Neimann-Picktype C (NPC), which is the result of a disruption in the efflux of cholesterol and sphingolipids from the endocytic pathway. NPC demonstrates this concept of a spectrum of …

Essays Analyzing Economic Consequences Of Caste Dynamics In India, Nikhil Ganvir

Economics ETDs

Scheduled Castes (SC) and Scheduled Tribes (ST) are historically disadvantaged communities that face discrimination on the grounds of their lower social positioning in society. This dissertation comprises 5 Chapters. Chapter 1 provides a brief outline regarding the stratification in India based on Caste and illustrates the importance of studying the economic consequences of caste-based discrimination in India. Chapter 2 analyses the effect of caste-based residential segregation in rural India and its effect on marginalized children's education outcomes. The results show that caste residential segregation dampens the education outcomes for children belonging to SC/ST communities with no discernable effects on students …

A Recreational Sport To Promote Interprofessional Education Among Health Science Center Student-Learners, Isabella Bernino, Cameron Samrai, Dylan Werner, Alyssa West, Vinh Tran

InterProfessional Education Research and Scholarship

This work seeks to disseminate the results of a series of interprofessional education (IPE) events focused around the team sport of spikeball held at the University of New Mexico Health Science Center. Physical therapy student-learners organized and implemented a bimonthly event over the course of two scholastic semesters to bring together other graduate learners from various health profession programs including medicine, nursing, emergency medical technician, dental hygienists, and others. The events offered an opportunity for peer-to-peer education among the various student-learners in an informal environment. The peer-to-peer format of the event is novel and significant, demonstrating a method to promote …

Diagnostic Evaluation Of Dizziness In Obstetric Triage, Annslee J. Lowe, Anna Shields

InterProfessional Education Research and Scholarship

Dizziness is a non-specific term used to describe various sensations of spinning, disequilibrium, imbalance, or near-syncope. The differential diagnosis for this symptom is rather extensive and includes potentially dangerous etiologies, which contributes to the significance of diagnostic evaluation. Dizziness is a frequent concern prompting pregnant patients to seek medical care, and the hemodynamic changes that occur in pregnancy further complicate clinical assessment in obstetric (OB) triage. While often familiar with dizziness as a symptom of hypertensive disorders of pregnancy, many OB triage providers experience uncertainty in working up other causes of dizziness. Root causes for uncertainty and the potential for …

The Intersection Of Covid-19 And Rural Health Infrastructure: Evidence From Rural New Mexicans, Maria Gaboldon-Parish, Kate Cartwright

InterProfessional Education Research and Scholarship

Rural communities experience notable health disparities compared to urban areas. These include an aging population with higher illness rates, worsened by inadequate healthcare infrastructure. Shortages in healthcare facilities, supplies, testing sites, and medical personnel further exacerbate these disparities, especially in remote areas. Addressing these challenges is crucial for equitable healthcare delivery and improving health outcomes statewide. Our goal is to analyze rural New Mexican residents’ perceptions of their community’s infrastructure and its interconnection with health. Key themes include (1) the disparities in community and public resources available, (2) limited access to healthcare facilities due to distance, staff shortages, and limited …

Script Your Future 2024, Alexander Nihart, Nicholas Olivas, Kaitlyn Zbylut, Amy Bachyrycz, Melissa Martinez

InterProfessional Education Research and Scholarship

Script Your Future (SYF) is an annual campaign run by the National Consumers League (NCL) which promotes health outreach by health professions students. A number of focus areas are established each year, with the foundation being the promotion of medication adherence. The UNM College of Pharmacy student leaders, with assistance from the IPE office, called for students from all programs on the Health Science Center (HSC) campus to come together as a part of SYF.

This is extremely important because, as the NCL states, medication adherence is a cornerstone of effective disease treatment, with non-adherence being the cause of an …

Pulmonary Osteoclast-Like Cells In Silica Induced Pulmonary Fibrosis, Yoshihiro Hasegawa, Steven L Teitelbaum, Et Al.

2020-Current year OA Pubs

The pathophysiology of silicosis is poorly understood, limiting development of therapies for those who have been exposed to the respirable particle. We explored mechanisms of silica-induced pulmonary fibrosis in human lung samples collected from patients with occupational exposure to silica and in a longitudinal mouse model of silicosis using multiple modalities including whole-lung single-cell RNA sequencing and histological, biochemical, and physiologic assessments. In addition to pulmonary inflammation and fibrosis, intratracheal silica challenge induced osteoclast-like differentiation of alveolar macrophages and recruited monocytes, driven by induction of the osteoclastogenic cytokine, receptor activator of nuclear factor κΒ ligand (RANKL) in pulmonary lymphocytes, and …

Thermodynamic Coupling Of The Tandem Rrm Domains Of Hnrnp A1 Underlie Its Pleiotropic Rna Binding Functions, Jeffrey D Levengood, Davit Potoyan, Srinivasa Penumutchu, Abhishek Kumar, Qianzi Zhou, Yiqing Wang, Alexandar L Hansen, Sebla Kutluay, Julien Roche, Blanton S Tolbert

2020-Current year OA Pubs

The functional properties of RNA binding proteins (RBPs) require allosteric regulation through interdomain communication. Despite the importance of allostery to biological regulation, only a few studies have been conducted to describe the biophysical nature by which interdomain communication manifests in RBPs. Here, we show for hnRNP A1 that interdomain communication is vital for the unique stability of its amino-terminal domain, which consists of two RNA recognition motifs (RRMs). These RRMs exhibit drastically different stability under pressure. RRM2 unfolds as an individual domain but remains stable when appended to RRM1. Variants that disrupt interdomain communication between the tandem RRMs show a …

Higher Order Operator Splitting Schemes With Complex Coefficients And Applications, Arun Banjara

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The goal of this dissertation is to apply the concept of Lie generators for linear semigroups induced by nonlinear flows, originally developed by J. R. Dorroh and J. W. Neuberger in the 1990’s [15], to approximate solutions of initial value problems like

x′(t) = F(x(t)), x(0) = x₀, (1)

where F = (F₁,··· ,F_N), and F_i : R^N ⊃ Ω -> R^N. The method, sometimes referred to as ``Bernard Koopman’s Global Linearization Method,” traces its origins back to the works of Sophus Lie in the 1890’s [30], Gerhard Kowalewski in …

Asmrtistry In Immersive Sound: Investigating The Effectiveness Of Immersive Sound Technologies In Eliciting Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response, Scott D. Nelson

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Despite a wide array of immersive sound technologies available to digital media creators who specialize in making audio-visual content that aims to elicit Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response (ASMR), only a few sound reproduction modalities are widely used: mono/stereo and binaural recording. To date, nearly all research studying ASMR, a bio-sensory phenomenon wherein people feel brain tingles triggered by calming audio-visual cues, has been content to carry out ASMR studies entirely with stereo and binaural sound reproduction methods. Therefore, it stands to reason that more understanding about how diverse immersive sound modalities like wave field synthesis, or three-dimensional spatial audio for …

Performance Assessment Of Aboveground Storage Tanks During Flood Events, Md Manik Mia

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This research addressed the performance of aboveground storage tanks (ASTs) and connected pipelines during floods. ASTs, integral to the oil and gas industry, store hazardous materials like crude oil and chemicals. Positioned near coastal regions, especially the hurricane-prone Gulf Coast, these areas are vulnerable to natural hazards such as floods and hurricanes. This vulnerability can lead to potential environmental and economic disasters, as seen with past hurricanes.
The primary objectives were to investigate AST bottom plate failure mechanisms under flood conditions, assess material failure in tank shells and bottom plates using finite element models, examine the behavior of connected pipelines, …

Multiparametric Mri-Based Radiomic Models For Early Prediction Of Response To Neoadjuvant Systemic Therapy In Triple-Negative Breast Cancer, Rania M Mohamed, Bikash Panthi, Beatriz E Adrada, Medine Boge, Rosalind P Candelaria, Mary S Guirguis, Lei Huo, Ken-Pin Hwang, Anil Korkut, Jennifer K Litton, Tanya W Moseley, Sanaz Pashapoor, Miral M Patel, Brandy Reed, Marion E Scoggins, Jong Bum Son, Alastair Thompson, Debu Tripathy, Vicente Valero, Peng Wei, Jason White, Gary J Whitman, Zhan Xu, Wei Yang, Clinton Yam, Jingfei Ma, Gaiane M Rauch

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) is often treated with neoadjuvant systemic therapy (NAST). We investigated if radiomic models based on multiparametric Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) obtained early during NAST predict pathologic complete response (pCR). We included 163 patients with stage I-III TNBC with multiparametric MRI at baseline and after 2 (C2) and 4 cycles of NAST. Seventy-eight patients (48%) had pCR, and 85 (52%) had non-pCR. Thirty-six multivariate models combining radiomic features from dynamic contrast-enhanced MRI and diffusion-weighted imaging had an area under the receiver operating characteristics curve (AUC) > 0.7. The top-performing model combined 35 radiomic features of relative difference between …

Patient-Reported Quality Of Life At Diagnosis In Adolescent And Young Adults With Cancer, Goldy C George, Clark Andersen, Xiaohui Tang, Elizabeth Rodriguez, Midhat Jafry, Sairah Ahmed, J Andrew Livingston, Michael E Roth, Michelle A T Hildebrandt

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Background: The overall landscape of health-related quality of life (HRQoL) has not been thoroughly investigated in adolescents and young adults (AYAs) with cancer. Data are also lacking on how well HRQoL at the time of cancer diagnosis can prognosticate long-term survival in AYA survivors.

Patients and methods: We included 3,497 survivors of AYA cancer (age 15-39 years at diagnosis) who completed the Short-Form 12 Health Survey (SF-12) HRQoL questionnaire at diagnosis. Physical component summary (PCS) and mental component summary (MCS) scores were generated, with scores < 50 representing poor HRQoL. Differences in HRQoL by patient characteristics and tumor type were investigated using violin plots and t tests/analysis of variance. The effect of HRQoL on overall survival was assessed using Kaplan-Meier plots and Cox proportional hazards models.

Results: Overall mean PCS and MCS scores in this racially/ethnically diverse cohort (64% White, 19% …

Dansyl Fluorophore Functionalized Hierarchically Structured Mesoporous Silica Nanoparticles As Novel Latent Fingerprint Development Agents, Lais F A M Oliveira, Lais V A T Da Silva, Artur F Sonsin, Meclycia S Alves, Cristiane V Costa, Nicholas Ross, Thomas Zinn, Ticiano G Do Nascimento, Eduardo J S Fonseca, Alexandro M L De Assis, A Robert Hillman, Adriana S Ribeiro

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

A nanostructured hybrid material based on mesoporous silica nanoparticles (MCM-41) functionalized with chitosan and a fluorescent dye (dansylglycine), designated MCM-41@Ch@DnsGly, was synthesized and characterized with a view to its application for the visualization of latent fingerprints. These nanoparticles were applied as latent fingerprint developers for marks on surfaces of diverse chemical composition, topography, optical characteristics, and spatially variant nature, typical of forensically challenging evidence. For quality assessment of the enhanced fingermarks, the developed images were analyzed holistically using the UK Home Office scale, forensic protocols and, in terms of their constituent features (minutiae), using forensic software. Across a substantive collection …

Learning To Express Reward Prediction Error-Like Dopaminergic Activity Requires Plastic Representations Of Time, Ian Cone, Claudia Clopath, Harel Z Shouval

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

The dominant theoretical framework to account for reinforcement learning in the brain is temporal difference learning (TD) learning, whereby certain units signal reward prediction errors (RPE). The TD algorithm has been traditionally mapped onto the dopaminergic system, as firing properties of dopamine neurons can resemble RPEs. However, certain predictions of TD learning are inconsistent with experimental results, and previous implementations of the algorithm have made unscalable assumptions regarding stimulus-specific fixed temporal bases. We propose an alternate framework to describe dopamine signaling in the brain, FLEX (Flexibly Learned Errors in Expected Reward). In FLEX, dopamine release is similar, but not identical …

To Evaluate Efficiency Of Various Coronary Artery Disease Risk Scores With Traditional Risk Factors In Patients Undergoing Coronary Angiography, Sharma Kamal, Panwar Jasraj, Patel Krutika, Parmar Devratsinh, Kalyani Maulik, Dhorajiya Dixit

Journal of the Saudi Heart Association

Objective:

To analyze and compare various cardiovascular disease risk scores in Western Indian patients undergoing Coronary angiogram (CAG).

Methods:

In this prospective cross-sectional study,1213 patients who underwent conventional coronary angiography; clinical risk profile and biochemical investigations were evaluated prior to undergoing CAG. Apart from the demographic information, 10-year absolute risk of having a major cardiovascular event (cardiovascular death, myocardial infarction or stroke) was calculated for each patient using various available Traditional Risk Scores (TRS). The population was divided in low, intermediate and high-risk categories for each of these scores.

Results:

Traditional cardiovascular risk factors like hypertension (41.8%) and diabetes mellitus-II …

Emotional Capital And Compassionate Educational Space: Reflection On One Undergraduate Course, Katerina Bodovski

Journal of Contemplative and Holistic Education

In this essay, I reflect upon my experience of creating and teaching a new undergraduate course, Students, Parents, Schools. I look at the course content and process through the lens of emotional capital. While being one of the themes in the course, emotional capital is also developed for the students within the class itself. I identified four aspects of the course that can be linked to building emotional capital: bringing focus to oneself; encouraging students to capitalize on their own experiences; building meaningful connections; and creating a non-punitive environment. I discuss each of the aspects, illustrating them where appropriate …

An Epidemiological Study Of Tinea Corporis In Al-Najaf City, Ahmed Rashad Rasool, Amel Mustafa Kamil, Dhakam Mohammed Abbas

Maaen Journal for Medical Sciences

Background: Dermatophytes are humans' and animals' primary causative agents in charge of cutaneous fungal infections. Understanding the epidemic behavior of dermatophytosis, such as Tinea corporis, which specifically affects the trunk, neck, and extremities, might aid in its prevention. Aim of the study: The study aims to determine the proportion of Tinea corporis and dermatophytosis, the clinical type distribution of dermatophytosis, and participant demographics for Tinea corporis. Method: a cross-sectional study focuses on individuals diagnosed with Tinea corporis in the three general hospitals in Al-Najaf City the study takes place from April 1st to July 31st. all cases with tinea corporis …

The Contributors, Contributors

Budhi: A Journal of Ideas and Culture

No abstract provided.

A Rehabilitation Of The Body As Home: Reconstructing Young’S Feminist Phenomenology, Amanda Nicole C. Collantes

Budhi: A Journal of Ideas and Culture

This essay investigates Iris Marion Young’s account of female bodily experience and reconstructs her feminist phenomenology with the aim of reinterpreting and enriching the tradition of embodiment using feminist critique. It offers a clearer, more cohesive reconstruction of Young’s phenomenology by referencing three essays where she considers a particular aspect of women’s lived bodily experiences. It considers three recurring themes that appear in and are developed in the three main essays by Young referred to throughout the study. It presents personal, lived experience as political, thus encouraging social cooperation and women’s solidarity through collective meaning-making and a recovery of our …

Immanuel Kant’S Transcendental Idealism: On The Possibility Of Freedom In A Deterministic World, Anamarie R. Avecilla

Budhi: A Journal of Ideas and Culture

Freedom is a central question in Philosophy. It has always been asked: How do determinism and freedom cohere in a human being? How can the fact that humans exist and undertake life projects in a thoroughgoingly deterministic world be reconciled with the claim that human acts remain free and efficacious? This work explores the problem of freedom and determinism using Kant’s answer in the Third Antinomy in the Kritik der reinen Vernunft, and using Transcendental Idealism as epistemological framework for a possible resolution to this problem. If one could assume with Kant that what we know are not things in …

“Sapere Aude!” (“Dare To Know!”): Learn To Teach Feminism, Rainier A. Ibana

Budhi: A Journal of Ideas and Culture

No abstract provided.

Bacterial Isolates Associated With Urinary Tract Infection In Pregnant Women In North Of Thiqar, Iman Neamah Hussein Al Shuwaili, Haydar Khamis Al-Maliky

Maaen Journal for Medical Sciences

Pregnant women are most commonly infected with urinary tract infections (UTIs). Poor maternal and perinatal outcomes can come from it.One hundred and fifty urine samples were collected in a sterile procedure from pregnant women in north Thiqar province. With a duration period from September to December 2023. Several data were recorded from patients such as age, pregnancy duration, occupation and residence. In general they were 40 samples (26.66%) detected as Gram negative bacteria (G-ve) , while 20 samples(13.33%)showed non growth and 90 samples(60%) Gram-positive bacteria, among Gram negative bacteria: (20) isolates (13.33%) were Escherichia coli, (8) isolates (5.34%) were …