Digital Commons Network^™

Evaluation Of Settling Chamber Hydraulic Retention Time In A Sunshine Bass Biofloc Production System, Bartholomew W. Green, Candis L. Ray

United States Department of Agriculture-Agricultural Research Service / University of Nebraska-Lincoln: Faculty Publications

High total suspended solids (TSS) concentrations that result from the high feeding rates used in biofloc technology production systems can negatively impact fish performance. Excess TSS are removed from biofloc production tanks by side-stream settling chambers. The effects on solids removal, water quality dynamics, and performance of sunshine bass (female white bass Morone chrysops x male striped bass M. saxatilis) from three settling chamber hydraulic retention times (HRTs; 18, 43, and 87 min; designated HRT18, HRT43, and HRT87, respectively) were evaluated in this 126-d study in biofloc tanks. Corresponding settling chamber flow rates were 7.2, 3.0, and 1.5 …

Why Colorado Should Evaluate Clean Water Act Section 404 Program Assumption, John A. Kolanz

Colorado Environmental Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Lawyering 'Twisties': Naming And Untangling Performance Anxiety, Heidi K. Brown

Articles & Chapters

No abstract provided.

Culture And Fair Use, Michael Goodyear

Articles & Chapters

The intersections of race and copyright have been underexamined in legal scholarship, despite repeated calls for further scrutiny. The scholarship has so far focused primarily on identifying where copyright has fallen short in protecting the creative works of artists of color. This Article, instead, hopes to offer one viable solution for creating more inclusivity of different cultures in copyright: the approval of cultural adaptations under fair use.
Cultural adaptations—the transforming of preexisting works to reflect the cultural and social mores and norms of a different group—would appear on first glance to be prohibited as derivative works, which, under the Copyright …

Eviscerating Patent Scope, Shahrokh Falati

Articles & Chapters

The scope of patent claims directed to inventions in the field of pharmaceuticals and biotechnology has been stumped by the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit’s recent jurisprudence on 35 U.S.C. § 112. Specifically, the application of a heightened test for enablement of claims to a genus of compounds with functional limitations or a genus of therapeutic antibodies, coupled with an increasingly broader application of the written description doctrine, has resulted in considerable uncertainty in the biopharmaceutical industry. The Federal Circuit’s shift in interpreting 35 U.S.C. § 112 contravenes the statute and Supreme Court precedent by splitting the singular …

Facilitating Aquatic Invasive Species Management Using Satellite Remote Sensing And Machine Learning Frameworks, Sean C. Carter

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

The urgent decision-making needs of invasive species managers can be better met by the integration of biodiversity big data with large-domain models and environmental data products in the form of new workflows and tools that facilitate data utilization across platforms. Timely risk assessments allow for the spatial prioritization of monitoring that could streamline invasive species management paradigms and invasive species’ ability to prevent irreversible damage, such that decision makers can focus surveillance and intervention efforts where they are likely to be most effective under budgetary and resource constraints. I present a workflow that generates rapid spatial risk assessments on aquatic …

He, She, They, Other: An Examination Of Gender Associations With The Chatelaine In The Anglo-Saxon Culture, Dane A. Williams

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

The purpose of this paper is to study the chatelaine as a marker of gender attribution and overall usage within the Anglo-Saxon culture. Chatelaines are artifacts used to suspend multiple items to be employed for such purposes as grooming, tools, or keys and have been used widely from the Roman occupation of England during which it was used by all genders, to the Ninth Century when it was primarily used by women. As such, it is asserted that a single artifact should not to be solely relied upon to assign a gender identity to a burial, that these should be …

Conservation In Ecuador's Sangay-Podocarpus Connectivity Corridor: A Study Of Coproductive Capacities, Gabriel Isaac Oppler

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Connectivity conservation, a growing topic across science, policy, and management, is considered an important supplement to protected areas. A diversity of ecological corridors is emerging to restore fragmented landscapes, preserve intact habitats, protect biodiversity, and improve resilience to climate change. Despite increasing expertise and resources for planning corridors, many initiatives face challenges mobilizing science and governance to implement corridors on the ground. In many cases, biophysical science is supplemented with social science to better understand the human elements of connectivity. Similarly, collaboration and partnership are heralded as essential for effective governance of corridors. However, less is known about how these …

An Integrative Investigation Of The Synechococcus A/B Clade During Adaptive Radiation At The Upper Thermal Limit Of Phototrophy, Christopher L. Pierpont

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Thermophilic microorganisms have been scientifically observed since the early nineteenth century and have spurred many questions about the limits of life and the capacity of organisms to survive extreme conditions. Decades of research on thermophile proteins and genomes have yielded several proposed correlates of temperature that may contribute to adaptation of bacteria and archaea to high temperature. However, many of the generalizations reported are drawn from analyses of deeply divergent taxa or from individual case studies in isolation from mesophilic relatives. Members of the Synechococcus A/B (SynAB) group are the only cyanobacteria with members able to grow above 65 °C …

The Effect Of Attentional Manipulation On Cough Reflex Sensitivity In Patients With Cough Hypersensitivity Syndrome, Jane Elizabeth Reynolds

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

The cough reflex is complex and requires integration of sensorimotor information from the central and peripheral nervous system. Cough motor output can be volitionally modified even when a strong urge-to-cough (UTC) is felt which reinforces the idea of cortical involvement in cough and opens the door to consider how manipulating attention or changing cognitive load may impact cough reflex sensitivity. Two prior studies have shown healthy individuals have reduced cough reflex sensitivity to inhaled tussigenic stimulants when completing a distracting task, presumably due to influence from increased cognitive load. In this prospective case series study, 13 patients with cough hypersensitivity …

Development Of Nanodisc Affinity Capillary Electrophoresis To Study The Interaction Of Giα Protein With Cell Membranes, Bethany R. Emeigh

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Guanine nucleotide-binding proteins, or G-proteins, are crucial to cell signaling by acting as molecular switches through interactions with membrane-bound receptors. G-proteins have become of greater interest due to the possibility of novel drug targets. The G-protein alpha subunit, Gα, binds GTP before localizing to the membrane to interact with other G-protein subunits and G-protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs). Gi lacks a hydrophobic region to promote localization to the membrane, but a co-translational lipidation of the N-terminal residue stabilizes this interaction.

Protein interactions with biological membranes are challenging to study due to the complex structure of membranes and the often-limited quantities of the …

Mapping Racial Capitalism: Implications For Law, Carmen G. Gonzalez, Athena D. Mutua

Journal Articles

The theory of racial capitalism offers insights into the relationship between class and race, providing both a structural and a historical account of the ways in which the two are linked in the global economy. Law plays an important role in this. This article sketches what we believe are two key structural features of racial capitalism: profit-making and race-making for the purpose of accumulating wealth and power. We understand profit-making as the extraction of surplus value or profits through processes of exploitation, expropriation, and expulsion, which are grounded in a politics of race-making. We understand race-making as including racial stratification, …

Insights From Practitoners In Madagascar To Inform More Effective International Conservation Funding, Johanna Eklund, Jennifer Cheek, Luciano Andriamaro, Tsiorisoa Mihanta Bakoliarimisa, Christina Galitsky, Ony Rabearivololona, Domoina J. Rakotobe, Harifidy O. Ralison, Lalatiana Odile Randriamiharisoa, Joe Rasamoelinarivo, David Rasolofoson, Joelisoa Ratsirarson, Andriamandimbisoa Razafimpahanana, Eric Marcel Temba, Aili Pyhälä, Daniel C. Miller

Natural Resource Management Faculty Publications

Bending the curve on biodiversity loss will require increased conservation funding and a wiser resource allocation. Local conservation practitioner expertise will be vital in decision-making processes related to funding. Yet, the integration of their insights into funder priorities and strategies is often insufficient, particularly in countries where international funding comprises the bulk of support for conservation. More generally, the role of funding remains under-analyzed in conservation and opportunities for funder-practitioner dialogue at a broad strategic level are limited. We seek to address these critical gaps by presenting results from a participatory workshop of conservation practitioners in Madagascar, one of the …

The Morbidity Of Greater Trochanteric Pain Syndrome Is Similar To That Of Pre-Tha Hip Osteoarthritis, Sonia Wadekar, Avneesh Chhabra, Emily Middleton, Yin Xi, Joel Wells

MEDI 9331 Scholarly Activities Clinical Years

Aims: We sought to characterize the morbidity upon presentation of GTPS and compared it to patients with end-stage, hip osteoarthritis (OA) awaiting total hip arthroplasty (THA). We hypothesize that patients with GTPS will have similar or worse morbidity than hip OA patients.

Methods: This retrospective case-control study examined patient reported outcomes measures (PROMs) on activity limitations, quality of life, pain, and level of disability, in 156 GTPS patients (193 hips) and 300 pre-THA hip OA patients (326 hips). All patients presented at a single academic medical center. Patients with secondary hip conditions or previous hip surgeries were excluded from the …

Further Decoding The Molecular Relationship Between Pancreatic Adenocarcinoma And Diabetes Mellitus, Russell H. Moreland Iii, Sheema Khan

MEDI 9331 Scholarly Activities Clinical Years

Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) is a devastating malignancy, especially as there are no current reliable methods of screening. Recently literature reports a significant relationship with pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma and diabetes mellitus (DM). The pathologic molecular mechanism is not completely understood but it may hold insights into the development of novel screening and treatment options. In our study we compiled a list of 74 proteins involved in the PDAC and DM pathway, with 47 showing increased expression levels and 11 with decreased expression levels. These proteins are currently undergoing further computational analysis to identify their pathway interactions.

Intelligent Navigation Service Robot Working In A Flexible And Dynamic Environment, Said Abdallah

Theses

Numerous sensor fusion techniques have been reported in the literature for a number of robotics applications. These techniques involved the use of different sensors in different configurations. However, in the case of food driving, the possibility of the implementation has been overlooked. In restaurants and food delivery spots, enhancing the food transfer to the correct table is neatly required, without running into other robots or diners or toppling over. In this project, a particular algorithm module has been proposed and implemented to enhance the robot driving methodology and maximize robot functionality, accuracy, and the food transfer experience. The emphasis has …

An Evaluation Of The Biologics Price Competition And Innovation Act And Its Impact On Innovation In The Pharmaceutical Industry, Tara Williams

Theses

In the pharmaceutical industry, innovation is vital to bring more life-saving treatment options to patients. However, pharmaceutical manufacturers face strict safety and effectiveness guidelines set forth by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), before being able to place their innovations on the market. In attempts to balance the need for continuous innovation and stringent regulation, policymakers created the Biologics Price Competition and Innovation Act (BPCIA) of 2009. The BPCIA allows biosimilars manufacturers to enter a shortened FDA approval pathway and provides incentives for biologics manufacturers with the aims to decrease cost and increase access to medications for patients by …

Sustainable Food Waste Management Through The Integration Of Anaerobic Digestion And Thermochemical Processes, Diana Carolina Rodriguez Alberto

Theses

The processing of food waste along with animal manure through anaerobic digestion (AD) is a popular waste management strategy. However, there is the concern that with the proliferation of AD the management of its nutrient-rich effluent, known as digestate, becomes a challenge. Current digestate management practices not only present environmental risks, but also issues related to the seasonality of field spreading and the storage and transportation of large volumes of material. The integration of the AD process with thermochemical conversion (TC) could help reduce some of these issues. The production of biochar from materials already available in the digester setting, …

Beyond The Covid-19 Pandemic: The Importance Of Social Determinants Of Health In Educating Healthcare Leaders, Tashuna Albritton, Miguel Muñoz-Laboy, Umadevi Yokeeswaran, Marlene Camacho-Rivera

Publications and Research

As scholars of color and educators in the health professions, we are compelled to advocate for the inclusion of the study of health disparities and social determinants of health (SDOH) throughout higher education to understand, analyze, and effectively respond to healthcare access disparities, including COVID-19 disparities, in Black and Latinx communities across the United States. In addition to our identities and lived experiences, healthcare access disparities and their root causes are woven throughout the courses that we teach in the departments of social medicine, social work, and social and behavioral sciences.

Open House Notes From The Creativity, Discovery, And Innovation Workgroup During The Und Leads Development Process. The Notes Preserve Participant Feedback Related To Research, Creativity, Innovation, Collaboration, Scholarship, And Opportunities For Strengthening Und’S Future Strategic Direction., University Of North Dakota

LEADS Development Documents

Town hall notes from the Collaboration and Engagement workgroup during the UND LEADS development process. The notes preserve participant feedback related to collaboration, community engagement, partnerships, experiential learning, outreach, and UND’s role in serving communities across North Dakota and beyond.

Predicting Students' Mental Disorders Using Machine Learning, Maryam Sadiq

Theses

The mental health issues among students are prevailing due to predictions of low mood, anxiety, depression, and academic difficulties. Late diagnosis of these mental health issues takes prolonged measures to minimise its impact. Nowadays, machine learning is used to assess mental health by detecting signals that provide information about mental health through brain scans and questionnaires. Early detection of mental health issues in students possible to control them effectively. Colleges and universities are trying to improve student care by assessing their mental health and reducing mental health problems through psychological therapies. Machine learning techniques, including Multiclass Classifier, LAD Tree, and …

Ct-Guided Versus Mr-Guided Radiotherapy: Impact On Gastrointestinal Sparing In Adrenal Stereotactic Body Radiotherapy, Rupesh Kotecha, Martin Tom, Michael Chuong, Jessika Contreras, Tino Romaguera, Diane Alvarez, James Mcculloch, Robert Herrera, Jairo Mercado, Minesh Mehta, Alonso Gutierrez, Kathryn Mittauer, Rene Hernandez, Lori Rodriguez

All Publications

Background and purpose: To quantify the indication for adaptive, gated breath-hold (BH) MR-guided radiotherapy (MRgRTBH) versus BH or free-breathing (FB) CT-based image-guided radiotherapy (CTIGRT) for the ablative treatment of adrenal malignancies.

Materials and methods: Twenty adrenal patients underwent adaptive IMRT MRgRTBH to a median dose of 50 Gy/5 fractions. Each patient was replanned for VMAT CT-IGRTBH and CT-IGRTFB on a c-arm linac. Only CT-IGRTFB used an ITV, summed from GTVs of all phases of the 4DCT respiratory evaluation. All used the same 5 mm GTV/ITV to PTV expansion. Metrics evaluated included: target volume and coverage, conformality, mean ipsilateral kidney and …

Contextualized Vector Embeddings For Malware Detection, Vinay Pandya

Master's Projects

Malware classification is a technique to classify different types of malware which form an integral part of system security. The aim of this project is to use context dependant word embeddings to classify malware. Tansformers is a novel architecture which utilizes self attention to handle long range dependencies. They are particularly effective in many complex natural language processing tasks such as Masked Lan- guage Modelling(MLM) and Next Sentence Prediction(NSP). Different transfomer architectures such as BERT, DistilBert, Albert, and Roberta are used to generate context dependant word embeddings. These embeddings would help in classifying different malware samples based on their similarity …

Predicting Externally Visible Traits From A Dna Sample For Law Enforcement Applications, Niraj Pandkar

Master's Projects

A large majority of crimes such as homicides, sexual assaults and missing person cases are not solved within a reasonable timeframe and become cold cases. The ability to predict visual appearance and ancestry from a DNA sample will provide an unprecedented advancement in such criminal investigations. DNA based prediction of craniofacial features, phenotypes and ancestry can be used to reduce the pool of candidates onto which to perform further investigations. To achieve the above goal, it is first essential to substantiate, model and measure the intrinsic relationship between the genomic markers and phenotypic features. The first step is to standardize …

Differential Gene Expression Analysis Of Zebrafish Embryos Exposed To Simulated Microgravity And Insights Into Cellular Effects, Nicholas Lien

Master's Projects

Spaceflight consists of many dangers which adversely affects the health of astronauts through hazards such as microgravity and cosmic radiation. One area that is still poorly understood is how spaceflight impacts human reproductive health. This study aims to shed insight into how microgravity may impact the development of embryos. Differential gene expression analysis was performed via Jupyter Notebook and SLURM scripts and run on SJSU’s HPC server as a method of implementing NASA GeneLab’s RNA-Seq Consensus Pipeline. Data for this project utilized RNA-Seq files for early-stage embryonic zebrafish (Danio rerio), stored under GLDS-373. Gene Set Enrichment Analysis was performed to …

Understanding How The Relative Abundance Of Candida Species Impacts Transcriptional Regulation In Coculture Biofilms, Diksha Kool

Master's Projects

ABSTRACT Candida albicans and Candida glabrata are common fungal species that can change from commensal to pathogen due to their ability to form robust biofilms. Candida species are the leading cause of life-threatening conditions like Candidemia, and the existing treatments for biofilm-related infections are suboptimal. Research shows that the relative abundance of the two Candida species promotes biofilm formation, enhances pathogenicity, and increases antibiotic resistance. Thus, focusing on the importance of coculture, this paper utilizes RNA sequencing to investigate the gene expression leading to biofilm development in coculture through a time-series study.

“What I Have Learned About Ethnic Studies Is To Love Myself More”: A Look At Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy And Newcomer Students, Lan Nguyen

Master's Projects

Throughout American history, schooling has been used as a tool of settler colonialism, hegemony, and white supremacy. This process of utilizing schooling as a tool of domination has been labeled by theorists as “miseducation”. To attempt to combat the miseducation that students experience in their schooling, I implemented culturally sustaining pedagogy, which necessitates the maintenance and strengthening of students’ relationships with their cultures in schools. In my project, I focused on newcomer students, as immigrant students are often the most underserved population in schools, and also are the most vulnerable to assimilationist teachings. This project utilized classroom observations, student work, …

A Laser Frequency Transverse Modulation Might Compensate For The Spectral Broadening Due To Large Electron Energy Spread In Thomson Sources, Vittoria Petrillo, Illya Drebot, Geoffrey Krafft, Cesare Maroli, Andrea R. Rossi, Marcello Rossetti Conti, Marcel Ruijter, Balša Terzić

Physics Faculty Publications

Compact laser plasma accelerators generate high-energy electron beams with increasing quality. When used in inverse Compton backscattering, however, the relatively large electron energy spread jeopardizes potential applications requiring small bandwidths. We present here a novel interaction scheme that allows us to compensate for the negative effects of the electron energy spread on the spectrum, by introducing a transverse spatial frequency modulation in the laser pulse. Such a laser chirp, together with a properly dispersed electron beam, can substantially reduce the broadening of the Compton bandwidth due to the electron energy spread. We show theoretical analysis and numerical simulations for hard …

Codis: Community Detection Via Distributed Seed-Set Expansion On Graph Streams, Austin Anderson

Master's Projects

Community detection has been and remains a very important topic in several fields. From marketing and social networking to biological studies, community detec- tion plays a key role in advancing research in many different fields. Research on this topic originally looked at classifying nodes into discrete communities, but eventually moved forward to placing nodes in multiple communities. Unfortunately, community detection has always been a time-inefficient process, and recent data sets have been simply to large to realistically process using traditional methods. Because of this, recent methods have turned to parallelism, but all these methods, while offering sig- nificant decrease in …

Metagenomic Analysis Of Microbial 18s Eukaryotes Communities And Environmental Factors In The Western Antarctic Peninsula Waters During Austral Summers, Idan Siman-Tov

Master's Projects

Little is known about the environmental factors that impact eukaryotic microbial populations in the Western Antarctic Peninsula. Metagenomic and environmental data have been collected over the course of three consecutive austral summers in the Western Antarctic Peninsula off Palmer Station. More than 13 million 18S rRNA eukaryotic sequences have been taxonomically identified and categorized from the Antarctic water samples collected. Here we will investigate the environmental factors that affect eukaryotic organism populations, as well as possible indicator species that could provide insight as to the status of other eukaryotic species. Due to climate change, understanding these factors and identifying status …