Digital Commons Network^™

216 - Location Of Sonic Hedgehog Signaling In The Regenerating Zebrafish Retina., Adam Snyder

GREAT Day Posters

The Sonic Hedgehog protein (Shh) is required in the cell cycle for development and regeneration in zebrafish eyes. This is because it controls how cells differentiate into specialized cell types. The gene, ptch2, is also important due to it being a component of the Shh signaling. The retina needs to replace photoreceptors, a specific cell type of the retina, after it is damaged by light. It is unknown which retinal cells produce Shh. To detect which cells that express the shh and ptch2 mRNA, we plan to perform in situ hybridization using antisense probes on regenerating retinal sections and compare …

237 - Investigation Of Cytoskeletal Protein Reconstruction Of Vulvar Cancer With Surface-Enhanced Raman Spectroscopy, Nicole Mathewson

GREAT Day Posters

The A431 vulvar cancer cell line undergoes a defined cellular transformation when treated with the corticosteroid clobetasol, marked by changes in cytoskeletal protein biomarkers indicative of epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT). Replicated experiments demonstrate that this transformation provides a valuable model for studying protein interactions from a chemical perspective. To quantify these interactions, we employed surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) combined with gold nanoparticles, enhancing the detection sensitivity of cytoskeletal protein changes. By tracking protein dynamics and surface composition throughout the cellular transformation, we aim to elucidate the mechanisms underlying EMT. We have completed the data collection of A431 and A431D cells. Spectral …

272 - Florescence In Situ Hybridization In Zebrafish With The Neurod4 Gene, Sarah Allam, Olivia Schnauder, Lauren Conover, Samuel Sunderland

GREAT Day Posters

Neurod4, neurogenic differentiation 4, is a protein encoding gene that is crucial for neuronal development and is expressed in the nervous system specifically within the brain. The purpose of this gene is to regulate the extreme, rapid growth of photoreceptor progenitors in the retina of Zebrafish (Danio rerio). Due to the highly similar, although not identical, gene patterns in humans, Zebrafish act as an exceptional model organism to provide significant insights of the role of Neurod4 in human retinal and neuronal development. The transgenic nature of Zebrafish allows for genetic modification to express the Neurod4 gene in this model organism. …

Effects Of Hyperglycemia In Cognition And Sex, Erin E. Mcdonald

Senior Honors Theses

An empirical study tested the effects of Type 1 Diabetes (T1D) on cognitive function in a hyperglycemic mouse model. Strong correlations between mental illnesses, such as major depressive disorder, neuropathologies like Alzheimer’s disease, and diabetes suggest comorbid pathology. Considering the prevalence of both T1D and cognitive decline within the general population, the findings were relevant and aimed to identify early signs of cognitive decline in diabetic patients. Behavioral tests and immunohistochemical staining were utilized to determine the cognitive function of the mice, revealing decline or deterioration caused by hyperglycemia. Data gathered from the hyperglycemic or control mice were analyzed based …

Diabetic Retinopathy: A Pathophysiological Discussion, Nathanael C. Nicholls

Senior Honors Theses

Diabetic retinopathy is a severe complication of diabetes that is capable of causing vision loss or blindness. As a result of hyperglycemia, the disease increases oxidative stress and activates biochemical processes such as the Hippo pathway and the complement system to cause significant damage to the retina. Overexpression of BTG1 and microRNA-183 enables activation of biochemical pathways that lead to negative effects on the retinal vascular endothelium including angiogenesis and inflammation. Conventional methods of diagnosis for diabetic retinopathy include fundus examination, nucleoside detection, and optical coherence tomography angiography. Photocoagulation and hormonal intravitreal injection are the most popular current treatments, while …

The Employment Of Apoptosis In Embryonic Development, Hannah R. Fioramonti

Senior Honors Theses

Programmed cell death is necessary for the elimination of excess or damaged cells in all stages of life, but this is especially true during embryonic and fetal development of mammals. Beginning before implantation and continuing until birth, both intrinsic and extrinsic apoptosis are employed within mammalian embryos to ensure the viability of the organism, proper organ morphogenesis, integrity of the genetic material, and the high quality of the germ line. The formation of both transient and permanent ectodermal, mesodermal, and endodermal structures often involves apoptosis. In this review, a selection of apoptotic events within each germ layer and occurrences of …

Volume 16, Maggie Duncan, Madeline Little, Alicia Hoffman, Megan Livesay, Gabrielle Quaresma, Serenity Allen, Laina Pfountz, Ainslie Allred, Sabrina Robles, Nicholas J. Duellman, Trinity L. Deguzman, Melissa H. Savage, Margaret Dudley, Jocelyn Escobar, Olivia Hildreth, Olivia Hopkins, Benjamin Gettier, Lee Kassay, Jade Riddle, Ashley Seiders

Incite: The Journal of Undergraduate Scholarship

Introduction Dr. Amorette Barber, Director, Office of Student Research

From the Editor Dr. Hannah Dudley-Shotwell

Artist’s Statement Maggie Duncan

On Mentoring Dr. Lee Millar Bidwell

The Hujum Campaign in Uzbekistan and its Consequences by Madeline Little

Wet Cupping Compared to Dry Needling for Treatment of Patients with Low Back Pain: A Critically Appraised Topic by Alicia Hoffman and Megan Livesay

Optimization of eDNA Air Sampling Via 3D Printed Fan by Gabrielle Quaresma

Beyond the Classroom: A Qualitative Study of Teacher Attrition and Retention by Serenity Allen and Laina Pfountz

The Treatment of Subacromial Impingement Syndrome with Platelet-Rich plasma Injections Verses …

Porous Hierarchically Ordered Hydrogels Demonstrating Structurally Dependent Mechanical Properties, Elisabeth C. Lloyd, Sujata Dhakal, Shahrouz Amini, Rami Alhasan, Peter Fratzl, Douglas R. Tree, Svetlana Morozova, Robert J. Hickey

Faculty Publications

While hierarchical ordering is a distinctive feature of natural tissues and is directly responsible for their diverse and unique properties, efforts to synthesize biomaterials have primarily focused on using molecular-based approaches with little emphasis on multiscale structure. Here, we report a bottom-up self-assembly process to produce highly porous hydrogel fibers that resemble extracellular matrices both structurally and mechanically. Physically crosslinked nanostructured micelles form the walls of micrometer-sized water-rich pores with preferred orientation along the fiber direction. Low elastic moduli (< 1 kPa), high elasticity (extending by more than 12 times the initial length), non-linear elasticity (e.g., hyperelasticity), and completely reversible extension are derived from unevenly distributed strain between the micrometer-sized pores and the polymer chains, which is reminiscent of cellular solids. Control of the material microstructure and orientation over many orders of magnitude (e.g., nm–μm), while holding the nanostructure constant, reveals how the multiscale structure directly impacts mechanical properties.

Effects Of Novel Fire Regimes On Plant And Animal Communities, Ryan Pienaar

Theses and Dissertations

Human actions are threatening global biodiversity through changes to ecosystems to which species are not well adapted. One of the main pathways by which humans affect change is through altered disturbance regimes. This includes changes in the size, frequency, and severity of wildfires. The impact of wildfires on native plant and animal communities varies across ecosystems as species in a community have adapted relatively predictable fire patterns over time. Changing fire patterns alters successional dynamics that can favor certain species over others and thus have a negative impact on biodiversity. This dissertation evaluates responses of different plant and animal species …

Thinking Beyond Association Tests: Using Mathematical Models To Identify Genes Influencing Exceptional Longevity, Sandeep Acharya

McKelvey School of Engineering Graduate Student Theses & Dissertations

The main goal in the genetic study of trait biology is to identify genetic factors, such as variants and genes, that causally influence traits and to understand the downstream mechanisms through which they exert their effects. This dissertation improves our understanding of trait biology by building on widely applied omics-wide association studies (omics-WAS), such as GWAS and TWAS, and proposing methods that (1) combine association statistics from multiple omics modalities and (2) systematically incorporate prior knowledge from biological networks and functional annotations with omics-WAS summary statistics. First, we apply meta-analysis to integrate gene-level p-values from GWAS, TWAS, and rare-variant analyses …

Leadership Strategies For Employee Engagement And Retention In Behavioral Health Organizations, Nneka Grace Slater

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Healthcare business leaders encounter significant challenges related to employee engagement and retention across the United States. These healthcare business leaders are increasingly concerned with developing effective leadership strategies that promote employee engagement and ensure retention for periods extending beyond 5 years for improved organizational performance. Grounded in participative theory, the purpose of this qualitative pragmatic inquiry was to explore strategies business owners use to minimize employees’ intent to leave. The participants included six behavioral healthcare leaders in Monroe, Louisiana, United States, who successfully implemented strategies to engage and retain their employees for at least 5 years. Data were collected using …

A Natural Short Sleep Mutation Promotes Longevity Through Mitochondrial Respiration In Drosophila, Pritika Pandey

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Aging is an irreversible process characterized by progressive physiological decline and an increased risk of metabolic disorders, cognitive impairment, cardiovascular diseases, and neurodegeneration. Disruptions to the circadian clock—whether due to genetic mutations or behavioral factors—accelerate aging and age-related pathologies, highlighting a strong link between circadian regulation and longevity. However, certain individuals harbor a dec2^P384R mutation, which enables natural short sleep without the detrimental effects of chronic sleep deprivation. This suggests that these individuals have evolved adaptations that activate pro-health pathways, allowing them to function optimally with reduced sleep. To investigate the genetic mechanisms underlying these changes, we developed a …

Investigating Macrophage Interactions With Listeria Monocytogenes Grown Under Different Conditions, Patrick J. Hurst

Honors Theses

Listeria monocytogenes is a Gram-positive, intracellular pathogen responsible for the deadly foodborne illness listeriosis. It is known to express different virulence factors in response to different environmental factors, influencing how the pathogen interacts with the host immune system. From food packaging to digestion, L. monocytogenes is exposed to many different environmental conditions. My honors thesis research focused on two conditions—cold storage and the presence of antimicrobial food additives—and how these conditions affect immune responses against L. monocytogenes. One of the first immune defenses that L. monocytogenes encounters in the body is the phagocytic macrophage. Macrophages can exhibit different shapes or …

Demography Of Bluff View Cemetery Vermillion, Sd, Ellie E. Schwartz

Honors Thesis

Cemeteries offer accessible, rich data for research on demographic reconstruction of past populations. Gravestones can give vital information such as date of birth, date of death, sex/gender, occupation, religious affiliation, and, implicitly, social and cultural values of the community at large (Dethlefsen and Deetz, 1966; Sattenspiel and Stoops, 2010). One of the drawbacks of cemetery data are that they more often than not do not provide details of the cause of death for an individual or in some rare occasions cause of death is on the gravestones (e.g., colonial graves during the tuberculosis outbreak in New England would often list …

Impact Of Antidiabetic Medication Type On A New Episode Of Depression: A Retrospective Cohort Study In Texas, Usa, Lin-Na Chou, Mukaila A Raji, Holly M Holmes, Yong-Fang Kuo

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Objectives: To examine the associations between antidiabetic medication type and a new episode of depression using 100% Texas Medicare database during 2009 and 2018.

Design: A retrospective cohort study.

Setting: A population-based study using the Texas Medicare data.

Interventions: 11 common antihyperglycaemic medication types, alone and in combinations: metformin-only, five non-metformin-containing regimens (dipeptidyl peptidase-4 inhibitor (DPP4i) only, sulfonylureas (SU) only, thiazolidinediones (TZD) only, SU/DPP4i and SU/TZD) and five metformin-containing combination treatments (metformin/DPP4i, metformin/SU, metformin/TZD, metformin/SU/DPP4i and metformin/SU/TZD).

Participants: This study included 59 057 type 2 diabetes (T2D) patients from a cohort of Texas Medicare beneficiaries who were aged ≥66 years, …

Verification And Demonstration Of The Ability Of Plasma Generated From Dielectric Barrier Discharge To Oxidize, N. Yasoob A.

Baghdad Science Journal

The oxidation ability of cold plasma is a major influence on bacterial inactivation, lipid oxidation, medical equipment sterilization, and applications in air and wastewater purification, for this reason, the ability of cold plasma to oxidize materials is an important factor that must be studied. In this study, the ability of cold plasma generated by a dielectric barrier discharge (DBD) to oxidize materials was revealed and proven by using different exposure times (5, 10, 15, 20 min) and several measurements: the decolonization of indigo carmine from dark blue to yellow, the significant reduction in pH, and the increase in oxidation reduction …

A Novel Approach To CExp Average Assignments On Chain Graphs, A. Rajesh Kannan

Baghdad Science Journal

In general, the exponential average of two positive numbers does not have to be an integer. Because of this, the exponential average needs to be an integer that takes into consideration the flooring or ceiling function. It has been defined that graphs can be labeled with an exponential average, where the flooring function or the ceiling function can apply labels to the edges. To establish the exponential average assignment on graphs, consider the edge labels that arise from the ceiling function alone. The vertex assignment function 𝛿 and edge assignment function 𝛿∗ are called a Cexp average assignment of the …

Is There Evidence For Changes In Antibiotic Resistance Of Microorganisms Causing Postcataract Surgery Endophthalmitis: A Systematic Review, Christina J Flaxel, Justine R Smith, Nieraj Jain, Leo A Kim, Stephen Jae Kim, Maureen G Maguire, Christina Y Weng, Steven Yeh

Faculty, Staff and Students Publications

Background/aims: To review the evidence for changes in antibiotic resistance patterns before and after cataract surgery since the advent of routine use of intracameral (IC) antibiotic prophylaxis and development of newer topical fluoroquinolones pre- and postcataract surgery.

Methods: Literature searches in the National Library of Medicine PubMed database were conducted between 2019 and 2021 and updated in 2024. There were no date restrictions, and the search was limited to high-quality studies published in English. The initial combined searches yielded 583 articles, and the search update in 2024 yielded 9 articles. Of these 592 articles, 26 presented original research that met …

Examining The Effects Of Symbiotic State And Environmental Pollution On Wound Healing In Coral, Jonathan De Montagnac

College Honors Program

Understanding coral reef health requires comprehension of the biological processes that support live coral cover. Corals are frequently exposed to physical abrasion from various sources, thereby necessitating vital resources be directed towards wound recovery. For corals and other organisms that harbor photosynthetic symbionts, the balance between autotrophic versus heterotrophic energy contributions influences their fitness. Experimentally disentangling the individual effects of environmental stress and symbiotic state on coral health is difficult in most tropical corals due to the obligate nature of their symbiosis. However, determining how nutritional dynamics, environmental stressors, and health interact is crucial to understanding coral resilience. To examine …

Exploring The Associations Between Young Adults' Autistic Traits And Parental Differential Treatment, Madelyn Winder Bennett

Theses and Dissertations

The current study sought to identify autistic traits that may elicit parental differential treatment (PDT). Understanding these links are important because numerous studies have shown PDT to have negative implications for healthy development. Participants (recruited via Amazon Mechanical Turk) completed a survey assessing their experiences of parental differential treatment and their own autistic traits using the Autism Quotient (AQ) measure (Baron-Cohen et al., 2001). Participants were young adults ages 18-29 (M age = 25.4; 57% Female, 43% Male; 73% White, n = 739) who resided in the U.S. and had at least one living sibling. Using regression analysis, we examined …

Meta-Analysis And Survival Analysis In Healthcare: Methods, Applications And Impact, Yinghui Wei

School of Engineering, Computing and Mathematics

We described our novel research in medical statistics and their impact in healthcare by drawing upon the following examples: a meta-analysis within the Cochrane review on the effect of cutting portion size on consumption of food; a Stata command to regenerate individual level time-to-event data from published survival curves; and the use of the difference in restricted mean survival time as an alternative to hazard ratios when analysing time-to-event outcomes.

2025 Program, Kate Votaw

Undergraduate Research Symposium

University of Missouri-St. Louis Undergraduate Research Symposium Program 2025

Temperature And Density-Dependent Effects On Mole Salamander (Ambystoma Talpoideum) Growth And Life History, Andrew Brown

Steeplechase: An ORCA Student Journal

Climate warming affects global biodiversity, causing species to alter their life history and trophic interactions. Predicting the effects of climate warming on ecosystem function is a difficult task as the biological traits that lead to these responses are poorly understood and climate warming’s effects on individual taxa can be highly variable. Amphibians serve as excellent bioindicators of ecosystem health, enabling them to act as early-warning sentinels of climate change. Polyphenic amphibians, including many salamander species, are particularly useful models for understanding the ecological effects of global change because morph production is environmentally-induced. Facultative paedomorphosis is a process by which individuals …

Passive Integrated Transponders: An Effective Marking Technique For Individual Identification Of Anaxyrus Fowleri?, Emily Haner

Steeplechase: An ORCA Student Journal

With the rise of fungal disease such as Chytridiomycosis causing massive population declines for many species of frogs and toads (order Anura), specific conservation strategies are needed now more than ever. In many cases, being able to mark and identify individuals is a necessary step in developing an effective conservation plan. Individual identification allows researchers to obtain accurate population estimates, which are needed to test the progress and validity of conservation management decisions. However, due to their unique life history, including cutaneous respiration, Anurans are among the most difficult wildlife species to effectively mark for individual identification. In a mesocosm …

Crossword: Test Your Biology!, Sukie Weinger

Osmosis Magazine

Biology themed Crossword Puzzle.

Intelligence Without An 'I': "I Think, Therefore I Am", Darshan Shah

Osmosis Magazine

From Billie Eilish hits to corny Pinterest tattoos, Rene Descartes’ famous dictum is embedded in modern Western consciousness. But, like all philosophy, it operates within a paradigm of assumptions about the world that remain open to challenge. Over centuries of Cartesian influence, these assumptions have become invisible in our philosophies and sciences, informing the very questions we ask about intelligence and where we search for it in the world.

Zealandan Interview With Dr.Kristine Grayson From Aotearoa New Zealand, Paxton Mills

Osmosis Magazine

ZealandDr. Kristine Grayson, Associate Professor of Biology, has been passionate about science and travel, particularly toAotearoa New Zealand, for some time.

The Science Behind Covid Testing, Zion Kim

Osmosis Magazine

On March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) officially declared a COVID-19 pandemic (“CDC…”, 2024). We all remember the days we had to wear masks, shove cotton swabs into our noses and mouths, and quarantine ourselves from others after being infected by the COVID-19 virus. We take this test all the time and trust their accuracy, but we never stop to ask how they work. We all know that a double line indicates an infection of COVID-19, but why?

Arsenic & The Princess Bride: How Your Body Handles Poison, Martin Jara

Osmosis Magazine

It’s a simply iconic scene from a simply iconic movie; in the cult classic film The Princess Bride, the protagonist Westley faces off against the scoundrel Vizzini in a battle of wits to rescue his true love. The challenge is simple: each man is given a chalice, one of them containing poisonous iocane powder. Colorless, odorless, tasteless, and soluble in water, Vizzini must choose the unpoisoned chalice off wits alone. However, he chooses wrong, dying instantly.

Not Human Enough: The Origins Of The Uncanny Valley, Franklin Young

Osmosis Magazine

Why do we feel creeped out when we see something almost human—like a lifelike robot or a bad CGI character? This phenomenon, known as the uncanny valley, describes the uncomfortable emotional response humans experience when encountering entities that appear nearly, but not quite, human. First introduced by Japanese robotics professor Masahiro Mori in 1970, the concept suggests that as objects become more humanlike in appearance, our emotional response to them becomes increasingly positive —until reaching a point where subtle imperfections trigger strong feelings of revulsion.