Digital Commons Network^™

Atlantic Cutlassfish (Trichiurus Lepturus), Gabriela R. Ridings Ms., David Kerstetter

All Scans: Kerstetter Fisheries and Avian Ecology 3D Scan Series

No abstract provided.

The Influence Of A Supplemental Mathematics Course To 9th Grade Algebra 1 Students In A Medium Suburban K-12 School District In New Jersey, Jacob Cavins

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

Math performance became an increasing concern in the United States after the launch of Sputnik in 1957. This concern began with attempts to prescribe mathematical standards in the United States to improve student mathematics preparation. When the COVID pandemic began in 2020, policies on quarantining and remote learning were implemented, resulting in increased education gaps. The most contemporary NAEP report shows the first decline in math scores in the United States since the inception of the NAEP. Districts are looking for solutions. Districts are exploring intervention options, including Multi-Tiered Support Systems and Response to Intervention initiatives. They hope to reduce …

Brain Microvascular Endothelial Cells Possess A Second Cilium That Arises From The Daughter Centriole, Karthikeyan Thirugnanam, Ankan Gupta, Francisco Nunez, Shubhangi Prabhudesai, Amy Y. Pan, Surya M. Nauli, Ramani Ramchandran

Pharmacy Faculty Articles and Research

Primary cilia from the brain microvascular endothelial cells (ECs) are specialized cell-surface organelles involved in mediating sensory perception, cell signaling, and vascular stability. Immunofluorescence (IF) analysis of human primary brain microvascular ECs reveals two cilia per cell. To confirm the in vitro observation of the two-cilia phenotype in human primary brain ECs, ECs isolated from mouse brain were cultured and stained for cilium. Indeed, brain ECs from a ciliopathic mouse (polycystic kidney disease or Pkd2−/−) also possess more than one cilium. Primary cilium emerges from the mother centriole. Centriole analysis by IF suggests that in brain ECs, markers …

Nk Cell Expansion Requires Hur And Mediates Control Of Solid Tumors And Long-Term Virus Infection, Sytse J Piersma, Sushant Bangru, Jeesang Yoon, Tom W Liu, Liping Yang, Chyi-Song Hsieh, Beatrice Plougastel-Douglas, Auinash Kalsotra, Wayne M Yokoyama

2020-Current year OA Pubs

Natural killer (NK) cells are lymphocytes capable of controlling tumors and virus infections through direct lysis and cytokine production. While both T and NK cells expand and accumulate in affected tissues, the role of NK cell expansion in tumor and viral control is not well understood. Here, we show that posttranscriptional regulation by the RNA-binding protein HuR is essential for NK cell expansion without negatively affecting effector functions. HuR-deficient NK cells displayed defects in the metaphase of the cell cycle, including decreased expression and alternative splicing of Ska2, a component of the spindle and kinetochore complex. HuR-dependent NK cell expansion …

Height With Age Affects Body Mass Index (Bmi) Assessment Of Chronic Disease Risk, Peter R Holt, Osama Altayar, David H Alpers

2020-Current year OA Pubs

Body mass index (BMI) is a function of weight and height, but changing height has not been emphasized. Using the Framingham Heart Study with 5 decades of data on anthropomorphic measurements and disease states, changing height with age was extracted, and BMI was calculated using current and "young" height (calculated as height at age < 40 years). Decreased height began at age 40, with a mean loss from ages 40 to 80 of 4.8 cm for women and 3.6 cm for men. Using cutoff values of 25 and 30 for overweight and obesity, ~12.5% of women and ~10% of men were misclassified. Comparable figures for obesity classification were ~10 and 8%. At age 70, ~20% of women and ~15% of men were misclassified. Using the BMI corrected to "young" height, obese subjects had an increased risk for developing pre-diabetes and diabetes, with a higher risk for women than men. Using corrected BMI, obese subjects had a higher risk for developing hypertension, lower than for diabetes and higher for men than for women. These data do not establish whether the increased disease risk is clinically important but demonstrate that there is an advantage to using BMI corrected for "young" height when compared with BMI using current age-related height.

The Echo: November 6, 2023, Taylor University

2023-2024 (Volume 111)

No abstract provided.

Advanced Multiscale Molecular Dynamics Simulations Of Amorphous Polymers, Sahar Zenoozi

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Polymers are in a wide range of material forms with various resources, including natural to synthetic processes. Polymers consist of covalently bonded monomers to each other. The chain length of polymers varies from a few monomers to thousands of monomers. This wide range of chain length enables polymers with attractive capabilities of chemical and physical properties. Thus, polymers are highly attractive in different scientific and industrial applications such as drug delivery, optical coatings, catalysts, semiconductors and organic photovoltaics. This work has combined updated accurate methods for accurate initial conformations, and modified force field parameters to produce a generalized method for …

University Launches New Cannabis, Dietary Supplements Program, Natalie Ehrhardt

University of Mississippi News

OXFORD, Miss. – The University of Mississippi has created a new online graduate program focusing on medical cannabis and dietary supplements, leaning on the university's long-standing reputation for expertise in both fields.

Barry Larue, Oral History Interview, 2023, Elizabeth Allen, Matt Jones

Oral Histories

Barry LaRue is a lifelong Ypsilanti resident, EMU alum, founder of the Riverside Arts Center, and former Operations Manager for University of Michigan theatres. Barry attended Roosevelt from Kindergarten through seventh grade, and, in this interview, he explores his experiences at Roosevelt going into detail about his involvement with theatre productions, the lab schools unique “progressive” curriculum, and the teachers and friends who left a lasting impression on him. Additionally, LaRue recounts his feelings of Roosevelt’s closure, his involvement in Ypsilanti city politics and preservation, and the ways that EMU’s campus has evolved since he was a student.

Traumatic Stress-Induced Increases In Anxiety-Like Behavior And Alcohol Self-Administration Are Mediated By Central Amygdala Crf1 Neurons That Project To The Lateral Hypothalamus, Marcus M. Weera, Daniel A. Webster, Rosetta S. Shackett, Federica Benvenuti, Jason W. Middleton, Nicholas W. Gilpin

School of Graduate Studies Faculty Publications

Avoidance stress coping, defined as persistent internal and/or external avoidance of stress-related stimuli, is a key feature of anxiety- and stress-related disorders, and contributes to increases in alcohol misuse after stress exposure. Previous work using a rat model of predator odor stress avoidance identified corticotropin-releasing factor (CRF) signaling via CRF type-1 receptors (CRF1) in the central amygdala (CeA), as well as CeA projections to the lateral hypothalamus (LH) as key mediators of conditioned avoidance of stress-paired contexts and/or increased alcohol drinking after stress. Here, we report that CRF1-expressing CeA cells that project to the LH are preferentially activated in male …

The Geologic History Of Primary Productivity, Peter W. Crockford, Yinon M. Bar On, Luce M. Ward, Ron Milo, Itay Halevy

Geosciences: Faculty Publications

The rate of primary productivity is a keystone variable in driving biogeochemical cycles today and has been throughout Earth’s past.¹ For example, it plays a critical role in determining nutrient stoichiometry in the oceans,² the amount of global biomass,³ and the composition of Earth’s atmosphere.⁴ Modern estimates suggest that terrestrial and marine realms contribute near-equal amounts to global gross primary productivity (GPP).⁵ However, this productivity balance has shifted significantly in both recent times⁶ and through deep time.^7,8 Combining the marine and terrestrial components, modern GPP fixes ≈250 billion tonnes of carbon …

Low-Cost, 3d Printed Irradiation System For In Vitro Photodynamic Therapy Experiments, Chris Acquah, Zachary Pabis, Sourav Kanti Seth, Liraz Levi, Carlos E. Crespo-Hernández

Faculty Scholarship

The development of a suitable irradiation setup is essential for in vitro experiments in photodynamic therapy (PDT). While various irradiation systems have been developed for PDT, only a few offer practical and high-quality setups for precise and reproducible results in cell culture experiments. This report introduces a cost-effective illumination setup designed for in vitro photodynamic treatments. The setup consists of a commercially available light-emitting diode (LED) lamp, a cooling unit, and a specially designed 3D-printed enclosure to accommodate a multiwell plate insert. The LED lamp is versatile, supporting various irradiation wavelengths and adjustable illumination fields, ensuring consistent and reliable performance. …

Developing 3d Printed Integrated Microfluidic Devices For Microchip Electrophoresis Separation Of Preterm Birth Biomarkers, Joule E. Esene

Theses and Dissertations

Preterm birth is a global health challenge and the leading cause of neonatal mortality. Each year, about 15 million babies are born preterm globally. Traditional tools that have been exploited for the detection of preterm birth biomarkers are expensive, time consuming, or lack multiplexing capabilities. The work described in this dissertation highlights techniques developed to detect preterm birth biomarkers rapidly and accurately in the effort to mitigate preterm birth risk. In this dissertation, I first demonstrated the use of stereolithography digital light processing-based 3D printing and microfluidics for the development of microfluidic devices that had microvalves for fluid control. I …

The Typical Trna Co-Expresses Multiple 5' Trna Halves Whose Sequences And Abundances Depend On Isodecoder And Isoacceptor And Change With Tissue Type, Cell Type, And Disease, Robert Akins, Kayleigh Ostberg, Tess Cherlin, Nikolas Tsiouplis, Phillipe Loher, Isidore Rigoutsos

Computational Medicine Center Faculty Papers

Transfer RNA-derived fragments (tRFs) are noncoding RNAs that arise from either mature transfer RNAs (tRNAs) or their precursors. One important category of tRFs comprises the tRNA halves, which are generated through cleavage at the anticodon. A given tRNA typically gives rise to several co-expressed 5'-tRNA halves (5'-tRHs) that differ in the location of their 3' ends. These 5'-tRHs, even though distinct, have traditionally been treated as indistinguishable from one another due to their near-identical sequences and lengths. We focused on co-expressed 5'-tRHs that arise from the same tRNA and systematically examined their exact sequences and abundances across 10 different human …

Efficiency, Equity, And Data As Private Property, Zvikomborero Chadambuka

Seton Hall Law Review

No abstract provided.

Trace Metal Cycling During Phytoplankton Growth In The Southern Ocean, North Pacific, And Tampa Bay, Shannon Michelle Burns

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The trace metals iron (Fe), manganese (Mn), cobalt (Co), nickel (Ni), copper (Cu), zinc (Zn), and cadmium (Cd) are essential to primary production in the oceans. They act as micronutrients, used in intracellular enzymes for macronutrient acquisition, light harvesting, and mediation of reactive oxygen species. In some cases, they can also substitute for each other when a primary trace metal micronutrient is depleted. Characterizing the interplay amongst trace metals, macronutrients, and phytoplankton growth is vital for understanding the biogeochemical underpinnings of primary production, and for modelers who develop biological pump frameworks for global carbon cycling.

In Chapter two, I investigated …

Investigating Mobility In The Northern Balkans During The Fifth Millenium Bc Through Strontium Analysis Of Human Tooth Enamel, Aurélien Tafani

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This research investigates how individual mobility among ancient populations in Romania during the Eneolithic, between 5000 and 4000 BC, may be related to the spread of the material culture known as Kodjadermen-Gumelniţa-Karonovo VI (KGK VI) that extended over most of southern Romania and Bulgaria. This work seeks to combine results on individual mobility with other lines of archaeological evidence to provide a better understanding of the social context and kinship relationships that were in place when these events took place.

Strontium isotopic analyses were performed on 130 individuals from two sites located in the southern Romania: 49 from Sultana and …

The Deubiquitinase Zranb1 Is An E3 Ubiquitin Ligase For Slc7a11 And Regulates Ferroptotic Resistance, Shan Huang, Qimin Zhang, Manyu Zhao, Xing Wang, Yilei Zhang, Boyi Gan, Peijing Zhang

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

The dependency of cancer cells on iron increases their susceptibility to ferroptosis, thus providing new opportunities for patients with treatment-resistant tumors. However, we show that lipid peroxidation, a hallmark of ferroptosis, was found in various areas of patient samples, indicating the potential resistance of ferroptosis. Using whole deubiquitinases (DUBs) sgRNA screening, we found that loss of ZRANB1 confers cancer cell resistance to ferroptosis. Intriguingly, functional studies revealed that ZRANB1 ubiquitinates and represses SLC7A11 expression as an E3 ubiquitin ligase and that ZRANB1 inhibits glutathione (GSH) synthesis through SLC7A11 degradation, leading to elevated lipid peroxidation and ferroptosis. Deletion of the region …

Comparative Phenomics: A New Approach To Study Heterochrony, Jamie C.S. Mccoy, John I. Spicer, Simon D. Rundle, Oliver Tills

School of Biological and Marine Sciences

Understanding the links between development and evolution is one of the major challenges of biology. ‘Heterochronies’, evolutionary alterations in the timings of development are posited as a key mechanism of evolutionary change, but their quantification requires gross simplification of organismal development. Consequently, how changes in event timings influence development more broadly is poorly understood. Here, we measure organismal development as spectra of energy in pixel values of video, creating high-dimensional landscapes integrating development of all visible form and function. This approach we termed ‘Energy proxy traits’ (EPTs) is applied alongside previously identified heterochronies in three freshwater pulmonate molluscs (Lymnaea stagnalis, …

Aptamers As Potential Therapeutic Tools For Ovarian Cancer: Advancements And Challenges, Wojciech Szymanowski, Anna Szymanowska, Anna Bielawska, Gabriel Lopez-Berestein, Cristian Rodriguez-Aguayo, Paola Amero

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Ovarian cancer (OC) is the most common lethal gynecologic cause of death in women worldwide, with a high mortality rate and increasing incidence. Despite advancements in the treatment, most OC patients still die from their disease due to late-stage diagnosis, the lack of effective diagnostic methods, and relapses. Aptamers, synthetic, short single-stranded oligonucleotides, have emerged as promising anticancer therapeutics. Their ability to selectively bind to target molecules, including cancer-related proteins and receptors, has revolutionized drug discovery and biomarker identification. Aptamers offer unique insights into the molecular pathways involved in cancer development and progression. Moreover, they show immense potential as drug …

Chimes: November 6, 2023, Calvin University

Chimes

Campus construction steadily progresses by Savannah Shustack

Women's cross-country team named MIAA conference co-champions by Dillion Baumchen

Student researchers present at regional conference by Gabriel Choi & Savannah Shustack

"God the Father is not male": A Q&A with Rev. Dr. Amy Peeler by Ethan Meyers

Sextortion: A problem on college campuses by Savannah Shustack

Plaster Creek Stewards seek to heal both ecological and human relationships by Jacob Westra

Isolating meat consumption from production prevents us from a deep understanding of our food by Savannah Shustack

Mechanistic Toxicology In Light Of Genetic Compensation, Mary Jane Elizalde, Daniel A Gorelick

Faculty, Staff and Students Publications

Mechanistic toxicology seeks to identify the molecular and cellular mechanisms by which toxicants exert their deleterious effects. One powerful approach is to generate mutations in genes that respond to a particular toxicant, and then test how such mutations change the effects of the toxicant. CRISPR is a rapid and versatile approach to generate mutations in cultured cells and in animal models. Many studies use CRISPR to generate short insertions or deletions in a target gene and then assume that the resulting mutation, such as a premature termination codon, causes a loss of functional protein. However, recent studies demonstrate that this …

Molecular Mechanisms Of Twist1-Regulated Transcription In Emt And Cancer Metastasis, Xiaobin Yu, Tao He, Zhangwei Tong, Lan Liao, Shixia Huang, Walid D Fakhouri, Dean P Edwards, Jianming Xu

Faculty, Staff and Students Publications

TWIST1 induces epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition (EMT) to drive cancer metastasis. It is yet unclear what determines TWIST1 functions to activate or repress transcription. We found that the TWIST1 N-terminus antagonizes TWIST1-regulated gene expression, cancer growth and metastasis. TWIST1 interacts with both the NuRD complex and the NuA4/TIP60 complex (TIP60-Com) via its N-terminus. Non-acetylated TWIST1-K73/76 selectively interacts with and recruits NuRD to repress epithelial target gene transcription. Diacetylated TWIST1-acK73/76 binds BRD8, a component of TIP60-Com that also binds histone H4-acK5/8, to recruit TIP60-Com to activate mesenchymal target genes and MYC. Knockdown of BRD8 abolishes TWIST1 and TIP60-Com interaction and TIP60-Com recruitment to …

Msis-Capaldi: Using Mathematical Models To Evaluate Strategies For Managing White-Nose Syndrome In Little Brown Bats, Julie Blackwood

Annual Symposium on Biomathematics and Ecology Education and Research

No abstract provided.

Utilizing Non-Negative Least Squares For Data-Driven Discovery Of Dynamics, Tracey G. Oellerich

Annual Symposium on Biomathematics and Ecology Education and Research

No abstract provided.

Modeling Student-Instructor Interactions To Predict Changes In Student Mindset, David Chan, Oyita Udiani, Rani Satyam, Miriah Dudley

Annual Symposium on Biomathematics and Ecology Education and Research

No abstract provided.

An Integrated Pest Management Model Incorporating Prey Refuge And Movement Between Regions, Aashima Singh Sisodia, Timothy Comar

Annual Symposium on Biomathematics and Ecology Education and Research

No abstract provided.

Incorporating Adaptive Human Behavior Into Epidemiological Models Using Equation Learning, Austin Barton, Jordan Klein, Jonathan Greer, Kevin Flores, Patrick Haughey

Annual Symposium on Biomathematics and Ecology Education and Research

No abstract provided.

Modeling And Simulation Of Discrete Stochastic And Hybrid Systems In Gillespy2, Kevin Sanft

Annual Symposium on Biomathematics and Ecology Education and Research

No abstract provided.

Baa-Ttling Sore Mouth In Sheep With Mathematical Modeling, David C. Elzinga, W. Christopher Strickland

Annual Symposium on Biomathematics and Ecology Education and Research

No abstract provided.