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2016

Disease

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Articles 1 - 13 of 13

Full-Text Articles in Life Sciences

Climate Change Drives Outbreaks Of Emerging Infectious Disease And Phenological Shifts, Jeremy Cohen Nov 2016

Climate Change Drives Outbreaks Of Emerging Infectious Disease And Phenological Shifts, Jeremy Cohen

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Climate change is expected to impact species by altering infectious disease outcomes, modifying community composition, and causing species to shift their phenology, body sizes and range distributions. However, the outcomes of these impacts are often controversial; for example, scientists have debated whether climate change will exacerbate emerging infectious disease and which species are at greatest risk to advance their phenology. There reason for these controversies may be that climate change is impacting diverse processes across a wide range of ecological scales, as the interplay between fine-scale processes and broad-scale dynamics can often cause unpredictable changes to the biosphere. Therefore, it …

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Gene Discovery In Mendelian And Complex Diseases, Sali Farhan Aug 2016

Gene Discovery In Mendelian And Complex Diseases, Sali Farhan

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Through the Finding of Rare Disease Genes in Canada (FORGE Canada) initiative, individuals affected with rare Mendelian diseases were clinically ascertained with a goal of identifying the genetic origin of their disease. Herein, I describe the methods for identifying the genetic basis of four Mendelian diseases. The application of next generation sequencing led to the discovery of non-synonymous variation in the DNA of individuals affected by rare diseases. The effects of the candidate variants were assessed using a series of functional experiments to complement the human genetics data. The variants observed in patients’ cells are extremely rare, were consistently predicted …

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Ab Blood Type And Its Genetic Relationship To Alzheimer’S Disease, Mark Wadsworth, John S. K. Kauwe Jun 2016

Ab Blood Type And Its Genetic Relationship To Alzheimer’S Disease, Mark Wadsworth, John S. K. Kauwe

Journal of Undergraduate Research

Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) is a debilitating disease that has increased the hardship of many lives. Many people above the age of 65 have been diagnosed with this genetically complex disease, which financially and emotionally burdens those diagnosed and their families. Earlier this year a study was released that found, using a dataset of individuals that have had strokes, that individuals with AB blood type are more at risk of developing cognitive impairment[1]. This study however was not looking at the genetics of AD. My objective in performing this study was to see if there is a genetic association between Alzheimer’s …

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The Mysteries Of Your Blood, Alexandra J. Mauer May 2016

The Mysteries Of Your Blood, Alexandra J. Mauer

BU Well

Did you know that your blood type can be useful for determining disease susceptibility and even creating a diet that works best for your personal metabolism? The Mysteries of your Blood is an article that delves into the science behind the ABO blood types and explains why your body can handle certain foods, stress, and illness differently than someone with a different blood type. It proposes a new, perplexing way to determine how to avoid certain health problems while at the same time offering suggestions of what to eat or, rather, what to avoid eating.

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Nonnative Forest Insects And Pathogens In The United States: Impacts And Policy Options, Gary M. Lovett, Marissa Weiss, Andrew M. Liebhold, Thomas P. Holmes, Brian Leung, Kathy F. Lambert, David A. Orwig, Faith T. Campbell, Jonathan Rosenthal, Deborah G. Mccullough, Radka Wildova, Matthew P. Ayres May 2016

Nonnative Forest Insects And Pathogens In The United States: Impacts And Policy Options, Gary M. Lovett, Marissa Weiss, Andrew M. Liebhold, Thomas P. Holmes, Brian Leung, Kathy F. Lambert, David A. Orwig, Faith T. Campbell, Jonathan Rosenthal, Deborah G. Mccullough, Radka Wildova, Matthew P. Ayres

Dartmouth Scholarship

We review and synthesize information on invasions of nonnative forest insects and diseases in the United States, including their ecological and economic impacts, pathways of arrival, distribution within the United States, and policy options for reducing future invasions. Nonnative insects have accumulated in United States forests at a rate of ~2.5 per yr over the last 150 yr. Currently the two major pathways of introduction are importation of live plants and wood packing material such as pallets and crates. Introduced insects and diseases occur in forests and cities throughout the United States, and the problem is particularly severe in the …

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Managing Drought Stress In California Agricultural Systems, Gregory D. Brittain Jr. Apr 2016

Managing Drought Stress In California Agricultural Systems, Gregory D. Brittain Jr.

Doctor of Plant Health Program: Dissertations and Student Research

California is currently facing a historic drought, and this has led many farmers in the state to severely cut back on irrigation. Optimal use of water for irrigation requires a comprehensive understanding of how plants respond physiologically to water stress (Chapter 1). By monitoring water requirements in crops and managing irrigation to meet those requirements, growers can significantly reduce water use (Chapter 2). This can be done through improving application efficiency of irrigation technology as well as increasing the water use efficiency of the crops themselves. Deficit irrigation practices can be used to manipulate the physiology of water use in …

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Gene Expression Profiling In An Alzheimer's Disease Mouse Model, Matthew R. Dalton Apr 2016

Gene Expression Profiling In An Alzheimer's Disease Mouse Model, Matthew R. Dalton

Senior Honors Theses

Explaining precisely how Alzheimer’s disease (AD)—the world’s most common form of dementia—materializes in the human brain has proven to be one of the most elusive ends in modern medicine. Progressive memory loss, neurodegeneration, and the presence of abnormal protein aggregates of amyloid-beta (Aβ) and neurofibrillary tangles (NFT) characterize this disease. Genome sequencing provides researchers with the ability to better identify disease-related changes in gene expression, some of which may play a role in the initiation and progression toward the AD-like state. Intimate interactions between tissues have been observed in many diseases, particularly between the brain and blood. This analysis seeks …

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Determining If C-Fos Protects Β-Cells From Apoptosis, Kyle Kener, Jeffery Tessem Feb 2016

Determining If C-Fos Protects Β-Cells From Apoptosis, Kyle Kener, Jeffery Tessem

Journal of Undergraduate Research

Diabetes, a disease characterized by the inability of the body to maintain a normal blood glucose level, continues to affect the lives of many. In both Type I and Type II diabetes, eventual β-cell destruction results in decreased β-cell mass. Regeneration of functional β-cells and protection of such, could help reverse the effects of this disease and could possibly lead to a cure. Many studies have been done to increase functioning β-cell mass, but protecting regenerated β-cells from further apoptotic insults could greatly increase the effectiveness of β-cell transplants and other future treatments of the disease.

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Better Cognitive Control Of Emotional Information Is Associated With Reduced Pro-Inflammatory Cytokine Reactivity To Emotional Stress, Grant S. Shields, Shari Young Kuchenbecker, Sarah D. Pressman, Ken D. Sumida, George M. Slavich Jan 2016

Better Cognitive Control Of Emotional Information Is Associated With Reduced Pro-Inflammatory Cytokine Reactivity To Emotional Stress, Grant S. Shields, Shari Young Kuchenbecker, Sarah D. Pressman, Ken D. Sumida, George M. Slavich

Biology, Chemistry, and Environmental Sciences Faculty Articles and Research

Stress is strongly associated with several mental and physical health problems that involve inflammation, including asthma, cardiovascular disease, certain types of cancer, and depression. It has been hypothesized that better cognitive control of emotional information may lead to reduced inflammatory reactivity to stress and thus better health, but to date no studies have examined whether differences in cognitive control predict pro-inflammatory cytokine responses to stress. To address this issue, we conducted a laboratory-based experimental study in which we randomly assigned healthy young-adult females to either an acute emotional stress (emotionally evocative video) or no-stress (control video) condition. Salivary levels of …

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Application Of Infrared And Raman Spectroscopy For The Identification Of Disease Resistant Trees, Anna O. Conrad, Pierluigi Bonello Jan 2016

Application Of Infrared And Raman Spectroscopy For The Identification Of Disease Resistant Trees, Anna O. Conrad, Pierluigi Bonello

Forest Health Research and Education Center Faculty Publications

New approaches for identifying disease resistant trees are needed as the incidence of diseases caused by non-native and invasive pathogens increases. These approaches must be rapid, reliable, cost-effective, and should have the potential to be adapted for high-throughput screening or phenotyping. Within the context of trees and tree diseases, we summarize vibrational spectroscopic and chemometric methods that have been used to distinguish between groups of trees which vary in disease susceptibility or other important characteristics based on chemical fingerprint data. We also provide specific examples from the literature of where these approaches have been used successfully. Finally, we discuss future …

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Bois 412/812: Human Genetics—A Peer Review Of Teaching Project Benchmark Portfolio, Colin D. Meiklejohn Jan 2016

Bois 412/812: Human Genetics—A Peer Review Of Teaching Project Benchmark Portfolio, Colin D. Meiklejohn

UNL Faculty Course Portfolios

This portfolio focuses on Human Genetics, an upper-division course taken primarily by biology majors to fulfill elective credit in their degree. This course studies the genetic basis for human variation, with the goal of placing this variation in the context of human evolutionary history and the consequences of this variation for medical understanding and treatments. In Human Genetics, students complete an original synthetic research paper on a human genetic disorder. Through writing this paper, students are expected to learn how to navigate electronic databases and online resources on human genetic diseases, and to read and synthesize the primary scientific literature. …

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Occurrence Of A Microsporidium In The Predatory Beetle Calosoma Sycophanta L. (Coleoptera: Carabidae), Mustafa Yaman, Mahmut Eroğlu, Renate Radek Jan 2016

Occurrence Of A Microsporidium In The Predatory Beetle Calosoma Sycophanta L. (Coleoptera: Carabidae), Mustafa Yaman, Mahmut Eroğlu, Renate Radek

Turkish Journal of Agriculture and Forestry

Calosoma sycophanta L. (Coleoptera: Carabidae) is a voracious predatory beetle that feeds on several important lepidopteran pests. It is mass reared in laboratory breeding and released against forest pests. Any infection in this beetle is undesirable because it impacts production of effective and healthy beetles. In the present study, a microsporidian pathogen was found in C. sycophanta. Mature spores of the pathogen are single, uninucleate, oval, and small, measuring about 3.04 × 1.7 µm. The spore wall is 100 to 110 nm thick and consists of two layers: an electron-dense outer layer, the exospore (30-35 nm), and an electron-lucent inner …

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Preventative Control Of Brown Patch With Select Fungicides, E. Alderman, J. Reeves, J. Hoyle Jan 2016

Preventative Control Of Brown Patch With Select Fungicides, E. Alderman, J. Reeves, J. Hoyle

Kansas Agricultural Experiment Station Research Reports

Preventative applications of Velista and Heritage Action fungicides will decrease the percentage of brown patch observed in a perennial stand of tall fescue.

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