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Articles 1 - 8 of 8
Full-Text Articles in Life Sciences
The Effect Of Breeding Herd Parity Structure On Genetic Improvement Of The Sow Herd, Caitlyn E. Abell
The Effect Of Breeding Herd Parity Structure On Genetic Improvement Of The Sow Herd, Caitlyn E. Abell
Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects
This study focuses on the value of the genetic lag associated with maintaining sows for additional parities in a commercial swine herd. Three traits were included in this study: number born alive (NBA), 21 day litter weight (W21), and days to market (D250). The economic values assigned to these traits were $22.00/pig, $0.70/lb., and $0.17/day, respectively. The genetic improvement per generation made for each trait was assumed to be 0.3 pigs, 3.0 lbs., and 3.0 days, respectively. It was estimated that the value of the genetic lag associated with retaining a sow to P3, P5, and P7 was $24.80, $46.89, …
Isolation Of A 3-Methylindole-Producing Bacterium From A Swine Waste Lagoon, Michelle L. Fusting
Isolation Of A 3-Methylindole-Producing Bacterium From A Swine Waste Lagoon, Michelle L. Fusting
Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects
With an increase in animal production closer to populated areas, odorants from animal waste are a rapidly rising concern. 3-Methylindole (3-MI) is an odorant produced from the biodegradation of L-tryptophan by bacteria in animal waste. Currently, no 3-MI producing bacterium has been isolated from swine waste, and isolation of such an organism would provide insight into production and regulation of 3-MI. Therefore, an experiment was designed to isolate a 3-MI producer based on previous work which indicates the presence of Fe(III) increases 3-MI levels. An Enterococcus sp. was isolated from WKU's primary swine waste lagoon in rich, anaerobic medium plus …
The Influence Of Spatial Scale On Landcover And Avian Community Relationships Within The Upper Green River Watershed, Ky, Cabrina L. Hamilton
The Influence Of Spatial Scale On Landcover And Avian Community Relationships Within The Upper Green River Watershed, Ky, Cabrina L. Hamilton
Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects
Landscape ecology studies are needed to aid land managers and conservationists in developing management plans that will effectively improve avian population trends. This study uses riparian avian point count survey data and landcover data to examine the possible relationships between riparian avian communities and landcover within the Upper Green River watershed. How avian-landcover relationships change with increasing spatial scale is also examined. Results showed unexpected avian-landcover relationships for specific species. A landcover gradient from open and successional habitat to closed, forest habitat was most prevalent in the study area and explained most of the variation within the avian datasets. Riparian …
Effects Of Drought The Lipid Content In Fundulus Catenatus, Angelena Edwards
Effects Of Drought The Lipid Content In Fundulus Catenatus, Angelena Edwards
Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects
During severe drought, small streams often dry to small isolated pools with subsequent high densities of fishes. Under such conditions, fish may be stressed by high temperatures, low food availability, and lack of refugia from predators. I was interested in whether fish restricted to isolated pools burn more calories than they take in, resulting in a loss of storage lipids (high energy molecules) in their bodies. During the 2007 drought, I collected Fundulus catenatus (northern studfish) from small stream communities in the Drake’s Creek watershed in south central Kentucky. I examined storage lipid content by processing each fish through a …
Curing Nature-Deficit Disorder: How Environmental Education Helps Kids Learn, Jamie Leigh Langley
Curing Nature-Deficit Disorder: How Environmental Education Helps Kids Learn, Jamie Leigh Langley
Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects
Walk into any public school and talk with the children about their experiences in nature and you will begin to see a pattern. Children have made few connections with the world around them. They do not spend much time outdoors and the time they do spend outdoors is not spent interacting directly with nature. Why does this matter? Look at these same kids and you will see another pattern emerging: Attention-Deficit Disorder, depression, obesity, emotional problems, etc. While not all of these problems are directly caused by a lack of interaction with the natural world, current research shows that there …
Quantum Dot Immuno-Conjugates Allow For Reliable Photo-Stable Detection Of Intracellular Stages Of Toxoplasma Gondii, Natalia Barahona Guerrero
Quantum Dot Immuno-Conjugates Allow For Reliable Photo-Stable Detection Of Intracellular Stages Of Toxoplasma Gondii, Natalia Barahona Guerrero
Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects
Luminescent quantum dot nanoparticles have emerged as a highly effective alternative to organic fluorescence probes in a variety of applications employing the use of immunoconjugates. In the present study, we have successfully used quantum dot technology for the immunofluorescent detection of intracellular stages of Toxoplasma gondii in a CV-1 mammalian cell line. This assay will allow us to investigate the question of whether selenium and other antioxidants have a direct impact on the intracellular cycle of the parasite. A Lab-Tek cell culture system was used to determine optimal concentrations of primary and secondary antibodies. Infected CV-1 monolayers were fixed in …
Where Do They Go When They Die?, Meridith L. Bartley
Where Do They Go When They Die?, Meridith L. Bartley
Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects
Food webs and matrices are vital to understanding feeding relationships and ecology. Adjacency matrices can be employed to present the direct relationships between predators and prey; these binary matrices utilize 0’s to denote no direct link and 1’s to denote a direct link. We analyzed a variety of published food webs ranging from pine forests in the United States to tussock grasslands in New Zealand. The food webs varied in number of distinguishable taxa present, functional diversity, climates and habitats. Consequently, we expect that our results are not specific to a given system. The published food webs lack flows from …
The Impacts Of Global Warming On Appalachian Wildflower Phenologies, Rachel D. Wigginton
The Impacts Of Global Warming On Appalachian Wildflower Phenologies, Rachel D. Wigginton
Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects
Public and private interest in global warming has prompted exploration of the impacts this phenomenon may impart on ecosystem functions. Flowering phenology has been one of the areas many scientists believe is particularly susceptible to the impacts of anthropogenic warming. Over three weekends in spring of 2008, the vernal herb community was surveyed at five sites within the Great Smoky Mountains regions of the southern Appalachian Mountains. The intent was to capture the naturally occurring elevational gradient and determine if the temperature cue for blooming was the same for all co-flowering species in the study. This information would allow for …