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Cardiometabolic Risk Factors Associated With Physical Fitness And Activity Levels: An Exploratory Study Of Us College Students, Keegan T. Peterson, Gabrielle Barraco, Jennifer Niessner, Melissa Rodgers, Melissa Bopp

International Journal of Exercise Science

International Journal of Exercise Science 18(8): 379-393, 2025. College students are a vulnerable population at risk of developing and/or experiencing poor physical fitness and insufficient physical activity (PA) levels, both associated with poor cardiometabolic health. Thus, this study assessed the association of physical fitness and domain-specific PA levels on cardiometabolic risk factors (CMRFs) among college students. A volunteer sample of students enrolled in general health and wellness courses at a large, Northeastern U.S. institution from Spring 2023 – Spring 2024 (n=1418, 69.0% male, 89.9% non-Hispanic White) completed an objective health assessment as part of a required course assignment. CMRFs (e.g., …

Regeneration In Planarians Modifies Behavioral Switching, N. S. Tellakula, Eva-Maria S. Collins, W. B. Kristan Jr.

Biology Faculty Works

The planarian Dugesia japonica responds differently to localized stimuli: anterior regions turn, middle regions elongate, and posterior regions contract. If cut into several pieces, each piece immediately produces the same three responses. Over several days, each piece regenerates all transected body parts. This study tested how the pieces coordinate behavioral responses during regeneration. We first determined the locations of the turning/elongation and elongation/contraction behavioral switches. Immediately, all transections moved both switching sites away from the cut sites so that the worm pieces produced the same three responses as intact worms. During regeneration, the sites of behavioral switching moved progressively closer …

Insect Wing Flexibility Improves The Aerodynamic Performance Of Small Revolving Wings, Gal Ribak, Ori Stearns, Kiruthika Sundararajan, Duvall Dickerson-Evans, Dana Melamed, Maya Rabinovich, Roi Gurka

Physics and Engineering Science

Insect wings are flexible, elastically deforming under loads experienced during flapping. The adaptive value of this flexibility was tested using a revolving wing set-up. We show that the wing flexibility of the beetle Batocera rufomaculata, suppresses the reduction in lift coefficient that is expected to occur with a reduction of wing size compared to rigid propeller blades. Moreover, the scaling of wing flexibility with size is intra-specifically tuned through changes in wing-vein cross-section, resulting in smaller wings achieving proportionally larger chordwise deformations compared to larger wings, when loaded with aerodynamic forces. These elastic deformations control the separation of flow from …

Medical School Watercooler Newsletter - March 21, 2025, Lindsay Hughes

Watercooler Newsletter

This is the Friday, March 21, 2025 edition of the Frederick P. Whiddon College of Medicine's newsletter -- Watercooler.

Contents include:

• Match Day 2025: Senior medical students match in residency programs -- and love
• Integrative Health and Wellness Program gaining state and national recognition
• 14th Gulf Coast Trauma Symposium set for March 26-28
• Children's & Women's Hospital receives grant for neonatal abstinence syndrome
• Cancer researcher awarded $300,000 NSF grant to study mitochondria

The Importance Of Recruitment Of Low-Income Pregnant Persons In Interdisciplinary Research To Understand The Impact Of Social And Environmental Determinants: Lessons Learned About Implementation And Recruitment, Erika R. Marquez, Amanda Haboush-Deloye, Elizabeth M. Lawrence, Selam Ayele, Courtney Coughenour, Nora Doyle, Wynona Dizon, Lizbeth Perez Rodriguez, Chloe Bombara

Environmental & Global Health Faculty Research

Background: Prior research indicates that enrolling underrepresented populations in clinical research is challenging. Although research has identified some barriers to participation and strategies to overcome them, studies have made little progress in being inclusive and representative. There remains a great need for including racial/ethnic minorities, low-income families, and pregnant women in research. The purpose of this article is to describe the implementation of enrollment strategies used in our study to understand the feasibility of building a maternal cohort and better understand the relationship between environmental and social impacts on maternal exposure and child outcomes.

Methods: Working across multiple academic units, …

Effect Of Prehabilitation On Functional Outcomes And Hospital Length Of Stay Following Total Joint Arthroplasty, Kristin Nicole Kaplewicz

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

The purpose of this study was to determine how prehabilitation effects functional outcomes and length of stay in patients that have undergone total joint arthroplasties. Patients have continued to report being unhappy with their results of surgery and a large majority of the time is secondary to patients not being appropriately prepared for what to expect during their surgical recovery period. This information is important because occupational therapists and physical therapists continue to strive to improve patient satisfaction and outcomes. One of the ethical principles that healthcare providers commit to achieving is that of beneficence which means the clinicians must …

History Professors' Attitudes About Civil War Monument Removal: A Qualitative Study, Natania Y. Piper

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

Violence in the United States is on the rise creating movements such as Black Lives Matter and others who call attention to ongoing racism in our country. One area of argument within the discussions of racism is the presence of Civil War monuments (CWMs) throughout the country. Many support the destruction, deconstruction, or relocation of these monuments, due to arguments that they are intended to demean and subjugate racial minorities. Others argue they do not carry this intent or meaning and are simply a memorial to former leaders. Little research exists that explores historian perspectives on this issue. The purpose …

Human Research Ethics Policy, Munster Technological University, Ireland

Policies & Procedures Documents

This policy provides an overview of how human research ethics is governed at the University. All research activity that involves humans as research participants, as outlined in Section 3, is required to undergo a formal ethical review prior to commencement of the research.

Procedures For External Research Requesting Access To Mtu Research Participants, Munster Technological University, Ireland

Policies & Procedures Documents

The purpose of this procedures document is to specify the process of human research ethical (HRE) review of external research studies requesting access to MTU research participants. As per the Human Research Ethics Policy1 all research activity that involves humans as research participants, including the collection of biological samples from humans, is required to undergo a formal ethical review prior to commencement of the research.

Procedures For Review Of Human Research Ethics Application Forms From University Staff And Research Students (Masters And Phd), Munster Technological University, Ireland

Policies & Procedures Documents

The purpose of this document is to specify the procedures relating to human research ethical review of applications from University staff and research students (Masters and PhD). As per the Human Research Ethics Policy1 all research activity that involves humans as research participants, including the collection of biological samples from humans, is required to undergo a formal ethical review prior to commencement of the research.

Persistence, Mentorship, And Educational Achievement: Exploring The Daca Student Experience, Patricia F. Mejabi

Education Doctorate Dissertations

The study aimed to understand demographic, cultural, and ecological factors, as well as supportive assets like mentorship on the academic persistence and educational achievement of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) students. DACA protects qualified individuals who arrived in the United States as children from deportation and grants them lawful permission to seek employment and educational opportunities.

Interviews of DACA students, and mentors and advocates of DACA students, were conducted to identify similarities, differences, and common themes. Despite DACA protection positively impacting the students' financial and academic success, limited socioeconomic conditions created a need for guidance or mentorship to help …

2025-03-21 Minutes & Appendices, Longwood University

Board of Visitors Meeting Minutes 1964-

No abstract provided.

The Artificial Intelligence-Enhanced Echocardiographic Detection Of Congenital Heart Defects In The Fetus: A Mini-Review, Khadiza Tun Suha, Hugh Lubenow, Stefania Soria-Zurita, Marcus Haw, Joseph Vettukattil, Jingfeng Jiang

Michigan Tech Publications

Artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly gaining attention in radiology and cardiology for accurately diagnosing structural heart disease. In this review paper, we first outline the technical background of AI and echocardiography and then present an array of clinical applications, including image quality control, cardiac function measurements, defect detection, and classifications. Collectively, we answer how integrating AI technologies and echocardiography can help improve the detection of congenital heart defects. Particularly, the superior sensitivity of AI-based congenital heart defect (CHD) detection in the fetus (>90%) allows it to be potentially translated into the clinical workflow as an effective screening tool in …

Environmental Conditions Explain Variability In Concentrations Of Nutrients But Not Emerging Contaminants, Megan L. Fork, Jerker Fick, Alexander J. Reisinger, Peter M. Groffman, Emma J. Rosi

Biology Faculty Publications

Aquatic ecosystems are subjected to many chemical stressors, including nutrients and emerging contaminants like pharmaceuticals. While pharmaceutical concentrations in streams and rivers are often below the thresholds for acute toxicity, they nonetheless disrupt ecology through changes to organisms’ physiology, metabolism, and behavior. However, analyzing samples for the wide range of manufactured pharmaceuticals is often prohibitively expensive for many monitoring efforts. As such, the ability to predict pharmaceutical concentrations over space and time using easier-to-monitor water quality parameters would expand our understanding of the scope and consequences of pharmaceutical contamination in aquatic ecosystems. We applied random forest models to data from …

Cardozo Law News Brief: March 21, 2025, Benjamin N. Cardozo School Of Law

Cardozo Law News Brief 2025

Highlights from the March 21, 2025 Cardozo Law News Brief include:

• Daniel J. Dominguez ’05 honored at the 15th Annual BALLSA Celebration, where three students also received awards.

• Professor Matthew Wansley quoted in The New York Times on Tesla’s permit for robotaxi services in California.

• Professor Zalman Rothschild published an opinion piece in The Washington Post about Hasidic education and the right to secular learning.

• Professor Haiyun Damon-Feng discussed immigration authority and birthright citizenship in Bloomberg Law and the Miami Herald.

• Professor Saurabh Vishnubhakat published in Nature Biotechnology and presented at major conferences on trade secrets and IP law.

Diverse Roles Of Stress-Responsive Rnp Granules In Oogenesis And Infertility, M. Rebecca Glineburg, Carolee Nguyen

Biology, Chemistry, and Environmental Sciences Faculty Articles and Research

Effectively responding to cellular stress (e.g., nutrient deprivation, oxidative stress) is essential for cell and organismal survival. A protective mechanism is especially critical in developing oocytes, where a prolonged quiescent state and the inability to divide render oocytes highly susceptible to accumulating stress that can result in cell death if unaddressed. Despite the common view that stress granules are the primary stress-responsive ribonucleoprotein granule, accumulating evidence shows that in ovaries, other ribonucleoprotein granules also uniquely mediate gene regulation in response to stress. Here, we review recent insights into ribonucleoprotein granule dynamics and ribonucleoprotein granule protein function during stress in the …

Shared Culture In Intimate Relationships, Jackelyn Castaneda

College of Science and Health Theses and Dissertations

Almost everyone identifies with some kind of culture and the definition often varies among researchers and disciplines of the field. Culture has an influence on every aspect of one’s everyday life, including the role it plays in close relationships. Although intimate relationships and culture have been widely explored in psychological research, limited studies have explored how these two factors may go hand in hand in creating what may be a newer concept, a mini-culture (smaller, unique cultural groups that develop within larger societies or organizations). The purpose of this study was to explore how this awareness of culture sharing and …

Facies And Depositional Architecture Of Upper Miocene Tidal Flat Sedimentation In Kefalonia And Corfu Islands, West Greece, Nicolina Bourli, Chrysanthos Botziolis, Penelope Papadopoulou, Panagiotis Zelilidis, Elena Zoumpouli, George Iliopoulos, Angelos G. Maravelis, Efthymios Trypsanas, Ioannis Oikonomopoulos, Aristotelis Pagoulatos, Avraam Zelilidis

Turkish Journal of Earth Sciences

This research involves the integrated sedimentological and paleontological analysis of the Neogene tidal deposits in the eastern parts of the Hellenic Fold and Thrust Belt, in South Kefalonia (Paliolinos-Avithos coast) and in NW Corfu (Arillas coast) islands. The study of tidal is supported by illustrative outcrop photographs, with a particular emphasis on two synthetic outcrops. Sedimentary logs were generated to document detailed bed-by-bed measurements, descriptions, and identification of sedimentary structures. Additionally, over 75 samples were chosen for age determination and paleoenvironmental analysis. Micropaleontological analysis encompassed 52 samples from South Kefalonia and 23 samples from NW Corfu and the results point …

Alternative Stones And Cleaning Efficiencies For Historical Building Stones Used In İstanbul (Türkiye), Ömer Ündül, Tuğçe Erözmen, Namik Aysal, Ahmet Güleç

Turkish Journal of Earth Sciences

Historical buildings are important part of the common heritage of mankind. İstanbul comprises many historical buildings built by geo-materials. A limestone (named as Küfeki stone in the region) is one of the most widely used stone in and around the city since thousands of years. The durability, excavability and workability of the stone attract the usage of this stone. Besides the outcrops of the rock were very common. Unfortunately, nowadays quarries and outcrops of Küfeki stone are totally abandoned due to dense settlement. For this reason, replacement of damaged or polluted stone with the original stone is a hard task …

Evaluation Of The Distress Thermometer In Older Patients With Cancer, Charlotte Zuber, Kristine Swartz, Andrew Chapman, Lora Rhodes, Tingting Zhan, Kuang-Yi Wen

Kimmel Cancer Center Faculty Papers

INTRODUCTION: The Geriatric Depression Scale is a useful tool in screening for depression in older adults, a particularly vulnerable population in oncology. The National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) Distress Thermometer (DT) has been validated as a fast and effective screening tool for psychological distress in general oncology populations, and it could possibly be used as a surrogate for the longer Geriatric Depression Scale (GDS) test in older adults with cancer.

MATERIALS AND METHODS: In this retrospective cross-sectional study in older adults prior to starting cancer treatment, we evaluated the relationship between the DT and GDS by comparing 242 older adults …

Gene Expression Profiling Of Pancreatic Ductal Adenocarcinoma Cells In Hypercapnia Identifies Siah3 As A Novel Prognostic Biomarker, Nitzan Zohar, Ryan Maguire, Saed Khalilieh, Aditi Jain, Dmitriy Bosykh, Wilbur B. Bowne, Harish Lavu, Charles J. Yeo, Avinoam Nevler

Department of Surgery Faculty Papers

Hypercapnia is a key feature of the respiratory microenvironment in many pathologic conditions. It occurs both as a regional and as a systemic process, and it is associated with multiple metabolic changes such as mitochondrial dysfunction, decreased ATP production, and metabolic shift from glycolytic energy production to fatty acid metabolism. In the cancer tumor microenvironment, hypercapnia has been linked at times to enhanced cell migration, invasion, and chemoresistance. Our previous work has shown that hypercapnia-associated gene signatures can be used as prognostic biomarkers. However, unlike the hypoxia-inducible factor pathway, there are no validated targets to quantify hypercapnia. In this study, …

Staff Education On Evidence-Based Educational Content For Patient Fall Prevention Measures, Ogochukwu Vera Nnakwe

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Patient falls continue to be a challenge due to the injury associated with them. They can be disabling, costly, and most often lead to increased morbidity and mortality. Falls at home lead to hospitalization of the patient and complication of other health issues and/or aggravation of preexisting health problems. The practice problem was that the clinic did not have patient education content in place for fall prevention measures to discuss with patient at discharge. The practice-focused question was, Will a staff education on evidence-based falls prevention measures result in an increase in staff knowledge on fall prevention? The purpose of …

Racial And Ethnic Inequalities In Actual Vs Nearest Delivery Hospitals, Nansi S. Boghossian, Lucy T. Greenberg, Jeffrey S. Buzas, Joshua Radack, Molly Passarella, Jeannette Rogowski, George R. Saade, Ciaran S. Phibbs, Scott A. Lorch

Faculty Publications

IMPORTANCE Minoritized racial and ethnic groups, such as American Indian and Black individuals, often receive lower quality health care compared with White individuals. There is limited understanding of how these disparities extend to obstetric care, particularly when comparing the quality of care at the actual delivery hospital vs the nearest obstetric hospital based on the birthing individual’s residence. OBJECTIVE To examine inequality in care based on the actual delivery hospital and the closest delivery hospital to the birthing individual’s residential zip code centroid. DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS This population-based retrospective cohort study used data from 5 states (2008 to 2020 …

Dependence Of Mitochondrial Calcium Signalling And Dynamics On The Disaggregase, Clpb, Donato D'Angelo, Víctor H. Sánchez-Vázquez, Benjamín Cartes-Saavedra, Denis Vecellio Reane, Ryan R. Cupo, Hilda Delgado De La Herran, Giorgia Ghirardo, James Shorter, Ron A. Wevers, Saskia B. Wortmann, Fabiana Perocchi, Rosario Rizzuto, Anna Raffaello, György Hajnóczky

Department of Pathology, Anatomy, and Cell Biology Faculty Papers

Cells utilize protein disaggregases to avoid abnormal protein aggregation that causes many diseases. Among these, caseinolytic peptidase B protein homolog (CLPB) is localized in the mitochondrial intermembrane space and linked to human disease. Upon CLPB loss, MICU1 and MICU2, regulators of the mitochondrial calcium uniporter complex (mtCU), and OPA1, a main mediator of mitochondrial fusion, become insoluble but the functional outcome remains unclear. In this work we demonstrate that CLPB is required to maintain mitochondrial calcium signalling and fusion dynamics. CLPB loss results in altered mtCU composition, interfering with mitochondrial calcium uptake independently of cytosolic calcium and mitochondrial membrane potential. …

Protocol For Unlocking Alternative Polyadenylation Insights From Bulk Rna-Seq Data With Polyaminer-Bulk, Venkata Jonnakuti, Sriya Jonnakuti, Hari Krishna Yalamanchili

Duncan NRI Faculty and Staff Publications

PolyAMiner-Bulk, a deep-learning-based algorithm to decode alternative polyadenylation (APA) dynamics from bulk RNA sequencing (RNA-seq) data, enables scientists to identify and quantify APA events from processed bulk RNA-seq data. The protocol allows researchers to explore differential APA usage between two conditions and gain a better understanding of post-transcriptional regulatory mechanisms. The major steps involve input data preparation, executing PolyAMiner-Bulk, and interpreting the results. A basic familiarity with pre-processing bulk RNA-seq data and command-line tools is suggested.

For complete details on the use and execution of this protocol, please refer to Jonnakuti et al.¹

Rare Damaging Ccr2 Variants Are Associated With Lower Lifetime Cardiovascular Risk, Marios K Georgakis, Rainer Malik, Omar El Bounkari, Natalie R Hasbani, Jiang Li, Jennifer E Huffman, Gabrielle Shakt, Reinier W P Tack, Tamara N Kimball, Yaw Asare, Alanna C Morrison, Noah L Tsao, Renae Judy, Braxton D Mitchell, Huichun Xu, May E Montasser, Ron Do, Eimear E Kenny, Ruth J F Loos, James G Terry, John Jeffrey Carr, Joshua C Bis, Bruce M Psaty, W T Longstreth, Kendra A Young, Sharon M Lutz, Michael H Cho, Jai Broome, Alyna T Khan, Fei Fei Wang, Nancy Heard-Costa, Sudha Seshadri, Ramachandran S Vasan, Nicholette D Palmer, Barry I Freedman, Donald W Bowden, Lisa R Yanek, Brian G Kral, Lewis C Becker, Patricia A Peyser, Lawrence F Bielak, Farah Ammous, April P Carson, Michael E Hall, Laura M Raffield, Stephen S Rich, Wendy S Post, Russel P Tracy, Kent D Taylor, Xiuqing Guo, Michael C Mahaney, Joanne E Curran, John Blangero, Shoa L Clarke, Jeffrey W Haessler, Yao Hu, Themistocles L Assimes, Charles Kooperberg, Jürgen Bernhagen, Christopher D Anderson, Scott M Damrauer, Ramin Zand, Jerome I Rotter, Paul S De Vries, Martin Dichgans

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

BACKGROUND: Previous work has shown a role of CCL2, a key chemokine governing monocyte trafficking, in atherosclerosis. However, it remains unknown whether targeting CCR2, the cognate receptor of CCL2, provides protection against human atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease.

METHODS: Computationally predicted damaging or loss-of-function (REVEL > 0.5) variants within CCR2 were detected in whole-exome-sequencing data from 454,775 UK Biobank participants and tested for association with cardiovascular endpoints in gene-burden tests. Given the key role of CCR2 in monocyte mobilization, variants associated with lower monocyte count were prioritized for experimental validation. The response to CCL2 of human cells transfected with these variants was tested …

Recommendations For Strengthening Blue Carbon Science, Martin Dahl, Paul S. Lavery, Inés Mazarrasa, Jimena Samper-Villarreal, Maria F. Adame, Stephen Crooks, Carlos M. Duarte, Daniel A. Friess, Dorte Krause-Jensen, Carmen Leiva-Dueñas, Catherine E. Lovelock, Peter I. Macreadie, Pere Masqué, Miguel Angel Mateo, Oscar Serrano

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

Blue carbon (BC) habitats (e.g., mangroves, tidal marshes, and seagrasses) are important CO2 sinks but are among the most threatened ecosystems on Earth. Substantial research over the last decade has quantified BC to evaluate the climate benefits associated with habitat conservation and restoration. However, the exponential growth in BC science has resulted in differing approaches that hinder comparison across studies and increase uncertainty. Here, we synthesized existing data to depict the range of uncertainty associated to different BC methodologies and argue that cumulative biases linked to multiple methodologies can result in BC estimates differing by up to 10-fold. We identified …

Antimicrobial Performance Of A Novel Drug-Eluting Bioenvelope, Zerelda Esquer Garrigos, Sunil Kapur, Michelle Leroux Williams, M Rizwan Sohail

Faculty, Staff and Students Publications

No abstract provided.

Dna-Pk Inhibition Sustains The Antitumor Innate Immune Response In Small Cell Lung Cancer, Caterina De Rosa, Floriana Morgillo, Luisa Amato, Francesca Iommelli, Viviana De Rosa, Virginia Tirino, Federica Papaccio, Concetta Tuccillo, Gaetano Di Guida, Domenico Michele D'Angiolella, Alessandra Di Liello, Silvia Zappavigna, Michele Caraglia, Antonio Gambardella, Valerio Nardone, Kavya Ramkumar, Qi Wang, Jing Wang, Ferdinando De Vita, Davide Ciardiello, Erika Martinelli, Teresa Troiani, Stefania Napolitano, Giulia Martini, Alberto Servetto, Lauren Averett Byers, Fortunato Ciardiello, Carminia Maria Della Corte

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Small cell lung cancer (SCLC) is a highly aggressive form of lung cancer with limited treatment options. Patients often respond well to initial chemo-immunotherapy but relapse quickly, necessitating new strategies to enhance immune responsiveness. Recent research explores combining DNA-damaging therapies with immunotherapy to activate the STING pathway and improve the antitumor immune response. The addition of DNA Damage Repair (DDR) inhibitors, such as DNA-PKcs inhibitors, after chemotherapy has shown promise in activating innate immune sensors and enhancing CD8

Islet Single-Cell Transcriptomic Profiling During Obesity-Induced Beta Cell Expansion In Female Mice, Peter M Masschelin, Scott A Ochsner, Sean M Hartig, Neil J Mckenna, Aaron R Cox

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Targeting beta cell proliferation is an appealing approach to restore glucose control in type 1 diabetes. However, the underlying mechanisms of beta cell proliferation remain incompletely understood, limiting identification of new therapeutic targets. Obesity is a naturally occurring process that potently induces human and rodent beta cell replication, representing an ideal model to study mechanisms of beta cell proliferation. We showed previously acute whole-body