Life Sciences Commons^™

Chacahoula 2023, Tram Phan, Mallory Kaul, Alayna Pellegrin

Chacahoula

WE GROW, WE DEVELOP, WE THRIVE:

The 2023 issue of Chacahoula includes December 2022 and May 2023 graduating classes, as well as stunning photography of Week of Welcome, Homecoming, Mardi Gras, and Spring Fever. With features covering notable students, faculty, and staff, this year's time capsule beautifully preserves an academic year in the life of the University of Louisiana at Monroe.

Using Noninvasive Calibrated Cuff Plethysmography To Observe The Effects Of Cold-Water Immersion On Arterial Compliance, Rita M. Grigorian

Master's Theses

As the prevalence of cardiovascular diseases continues to exponentially grow in populations across the globe, the necessity of determining underlying factors, effective methods of diagnoses, and universally available preventive measures also grows. Early detection of endothelial dysfunction, a proven precursor of cardiovascular diseases, can be extremely impactful in encouraging preventative measures and early intervention before medical conditions become chronic. In recent years, ice plunging, a form of cryotherapy involving full body immersion in cold water, has gained popularity within circles of fitness and health practitioners, gaining the interest of people of all backgrounds. Certain parallels observed between the human physiological …

G Protein-Coupled Receptors: A Target For Microbial Metabolites And A Mechanistic Link To Microbiome-Immune-Brain Interactions, Gajender Aleti, Emily A. Troyer, Suzi Hong

Agricultural and Environmental Sciences Faculty Research

Human-microorganism interactions play a key role in human health. However, the underlying molecular mechanisms remain poorly understood. Small-molecules that offer a functional readout of microbe-microbe-human relationship are of great interest for deeper understanding of the inter-kingdom crosstalk at the molecular level. Recent studies have demonstrated that small-molecules from gut microbiota act as ligands for specific human G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) and modulate a range of human physiological functions, offering a mechanistic insight into the microbe-human interaction. To this end, we focused on analysis of bacterial metabolites that are currently recognized to bind to GPCRs and are found to activate the …

Exploring The Spatial Patterning Of Sociodemographic Disparities In Extreme Heat Exposure At Multiple Scales Across The Conterminous United States, Deeksha Rastogi, Jaekedah Christian, Joe Tuccillo, Blair Christian, Anuj J. Kapadia, Heidi A. Hanson

Agricultural and Environmental Sciences Student Research

Abstract Climate change has led to an increase in heat‐related morbidity and mortality. The impact of heat on health is unequally distributed amongst different socioeconomic and demographic groups. We use high‐resolution daily air temperature‐based heat wave intensity (HWI) and neighborhood‐scale sociodemographic information from the conterminous United States to evaluate the spatial patterning of extreme heat exposure disparities. Assuming differences in spatial patterns at national, regional, and local scales; we assess disparities in heat exposure across race, housing characteristics, and poverty level. Our findings indicate small differences in HWI based on these factors at the national level, with the magnitude and …

2024 Western Australian Crop Sowing Guide, Brenda J. Shackley, Stacey Power, Blakely Paynter, Georgina Troup, Mark Seymour, Harmohinder S. Dhammu

Bulletins 4000 -

The 2024 Western Australian Crop Sowing Guide has been compiled by officers in the Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development. It provides information to support variety decisions for each of the major crops for the upcoming season.

Meiosis In Budding Yeast, G. Valentin Borner, Andreas Hochwagen, Amy J. Macqueen

Biological, Geological, and Environmental Faculty Publications

Meiosis is a specialized cell division program that is essential for sexual reproduction. The two meiotic divisions reduce chromosome number by half, typically generating haploid genomes that are packaged into gametes. To achieve this ploidy reduction, meiosis relies on highly unusual chromosomal processes including the pairing of homologous chromosomes, assembly of the synaptonemal complex, programmed formation of DNA breaks followed by their processing into crossovers, and the segregation of homologous chromosomes during the first meiotic division. These processes are embedded in a carefully orchestrated cell differentiation program with multiple interdependencies between DNA metabolism, chromosome morphogenesis, and waves of gene expression …

The Casnr L.I.N.K.S. Newsletter: Learning Innovation Network For K-12 Schools, Volume 2, Edition 9, October 2023, Bailey Feit, Tammy Mittelstet

CASNR L.I.N.K.S. Newsletter

The purpose of this L.I.N.K.S. newsletter is to provide a monthly update of opportunities and resources for K-12 schools to connect with the University of Nebraska's CASNR Food, Energy, Water, and Societal Systems (FEWS²) programs and partners.

Included in this edition:

Upcoming events, 2023-2024

Nov. 8-Panhandle REEC Career Day-Scottsbluff; March 21-NJAS Southeast Regional Science Fair; March 25-Eastern Nebraska World Food Prize; March 28-Northeast Education Compact School Visit Day; April 10- Cultivando Caminos (Cultivating Pathways) conference; April 15-Western Nebraska World Food Prize-Scottsbluff; April 18-NJAS State Science Fair

UNL Institute of Agriculture and Natural Resources, Agricultural Economics, High school commodity market curriculum …

The Influence Of Effluent: Exploring How Wastewater Effluent Impacts Ísafjörður, Iceland, Madi Bennett-Wells

Iceland: Climate Change and The Arctic

Wastewater effluent is of growing concern in communities without proper wastewater treatment plans in place. This study examines the effects that wastewater discharge has on water quality in various communities through field research and an accompanying literature review. Water quality parameters (pH and temperature) were used to determine the impact effluent has on the local harbor, Pollurinn, in Ísafjörður, Iceland. Results showed that there was a statistical significance between pH and the area of study, while temperature was more varied; these results signify that effluent has the biggest impact on the area immediately surrounding the effluent pipe. The literature review …

Relationship Between Reward-Related Brain Activity And Opportunities To Sit, Juliana O. Parma, Mariane F. B. Bacelar, Daniel A. R. Cabral, Robyn S. Recker, Dan Orsholits, Olivier Renaud, David Sander, Olav E. Krigolson, Matthew W. Miller, Boris Cheval, Matthieu P. Boisgontier

Kinesiology Faculty Publications and Presentations

The present study tested whether energy-minimizing behaviors evoke reward-related brain activity that promotes the repetition of these behaviors via reinforcement learning processes. Fifty-eight healthy young adults in a standing position performed a task where they could earn a reward either by sitting down or squatting while undergoing electroencephalographic (EEG) recording. Reward-prediction errors were quantified as the amplitude of the EEG-derived reward positivity. Results showed that reward positivity was larger on reward versus no reward trials, confirming the validity of our paradigm to measure evoked reward-related brain activity. However, results showed no evidence that sitting (versus standing and squatting) trials led …

Portugal To New Mexico: Investigating The Applicability Of Syntropic Agriculture To A Semi-Arid Continental Climate, Arielle Nathan

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Conventional industrial agriculture has numerous detrimental effects on the environment including high carbon emissions, pollution and overconsumption of water, soil degradation, and reduction of biodiversity (FAO, 2018). Large-scale alternatives are needed to combat these negative consequences and provide climate solutions. Syntropic Agriculture is a promising farming alternative especially in arid systems subject to degraded soils and desertification. New Mexico is a semi-arid continental climate in a prolonged period of drought and predicted to experience worsening agricultural conditions due to desertification, wildfire intensification, and exacerbated water scarcity. In an area with similar agricultural challenges, a project in Mértola, Portugal (Terra Sintrópica) …

Protecting Wa Crops Issue 34 - October 2023, Department Of Primary Industries And Regional Development, Western Australia

Protecting WA Crops

Protecting WA Crops Issue 34 - October 2023 contents:

• Does electric weed control work on herbicide resistant weeds?
• Meet Crop Protection team member – Miranda Slaven

Raman Spectral Cytopathology For Cancer Diagnostic Applications, Fiona Lyng, Damian Traynor, Isha Behl, Declan O'Dea, Hugh Byrne

Books/Book Chapters

Histopathology is currently regarded as the “gold standard” patient sampling technique for cancer diagnostics. It involves extraction of a tissue sample, or biopsy, which is then sectioned and stained for evaluation by a pathologist [1]. Cytopathology, on the other hand, is the field of disease diagnosis at the cellular level [2], necessitating only the microscopic evaluation of samples of cells which can be harvested by less invasive methods such as exfoliative brushing, needle probes or from biofluids. Based on the identification of abnormalities in cellular appearance, cytopathology is currently widely used to aid in the screening of cancer, as well …

Gastropod Shell At Oc, Heidi S. Hellenbrand

Hirons Field Techniques

Scanned Submission for Special Topics Field Techniques course (MBIO 4900). Found gastropod shell in Oceanographic Center boat basin landscape.

Nebline, October 2023

NEBLINE Newsletter Archive from Nebraska Extension in Lancaster County

Super Fair Showcases 4-H’ers Learning Experiences

4-H Youth Use Videovoice to Address Health Equity

Recipe of the Month: Jajic Middle-Eastern Cucumber Salad by Emily Gratopp

American Bittersweet Brightens Up Fall by Sarah Browning

Garden Guide: Things to Do This Month

Helping Children Calm Down by Hayley Jackson

Adding Wheat to Your Corn-Soybean Rotation Has Many Benefifits by John Nelson

Heart of 4-H Volunteer Award: Kari Schepers

Be Part of Something Big! Join 4-H!

State 4-H Horse Expo Top Results

13-Year-Old Tenley Bauman Embraces 4-H Learning Experience at Fairs

4-H Announcements for 4-H'ers and Volunteers

Super Fair 4-H/FFA Top Results

State …

Warmer Temperature Overrides The Effects Of Antidepressants On Amphibian Metamorphosis And Behavior, Peter Fong, Aylin Doganoglu, Eleanor Sandt, Sierra Turbeville

Biology Faculty Publications

Climate change can exacerbate the effects of environmental pollutants on aquatic organisms. Pollutants such as human antidepressants released from wastewater treatment plants have been shown to impact life-history traits of amphibians. We exposed tadpoles of the wood frog Lithobates sylvaticus to two temperatures (20°C and 25°C) and two antidepressants (fluoxetine and venlafaxine), and measured timing of metamorphosis, mass at metamorphosis, and two behaviors (startle response and percent motionless). Antidepressants significantly shortened time to metamorphosis at 20°C, but not at 25°C. At 25°C, tadpoles metamorphosed significantly faster than those at 20°C independent of antidepressant exposure. Venlafax- ine reduced body mass at …

The Uses And Limitations Of Citizen Science For Monitoring The Australian Grey Nurse Shark (Carcharias Taurus) Population, Leah Corckran

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

iNaturalist is a citizen science photographic database, which is an underutilized resource in photographic identification research studies. Grey nurse sharks are critically endangered and there is a lack of knowledge regarding the estimated population size, longevity, and interactions with fisheries of this species off the coasts of Australia. To determine how photos submitted to iNaturalist can be used in Carcharias taurus conservation, the photographs were evaluated on a number of criteria including: location, date, visibility of spot patterns, visible sex characteristics, and visible injuries. In total, 814 photographs of grey nurse sharks were obtained from the iNaturalist database. Only 23.2% …

2023 Fall Newsletter, Plaster Creek Stewards

Newsletters

Highlights:

Our Year at a Glance

Marketing as Education

Plaster Creek Mystery

Insect Biodiversity Study

Green Team and Wellbeing

Coming in 2024

Abalone Resource Of Western Australia: Harvest Strategy: 2021-2026 : Version 2.2, Department Of Primary Industries And Regional Development, Western Australia

Fisheries Management Papers

This harvest strategy has been developed and revised in line with the Department’s Harvest Strategy Policy for Aquatic Resources (Department of Fisheries 2015) and is consistent with relevant national harvest strategy policies and guidelines (e.g. Sloan et al. 2014; Department of Agriculture and Water Resources 2018a, b). It makes explicit the performance indicators, reference levels, and harvest control rules designed to achieve the specific long- and short-term management objectives for the resource, and the broader goals of ESD and EBFM.

The publication of this harvest strategy is intended to make the decision-making considerations and processes for the management of specified …

Specialized Late Cingulo-Opercular Network Activation Elucidates The Mechanisms Underlying Decisions About Ambiguity, Jordan E. Pierce, Nathan M. Petro, Elizabeth Clancy, Caterina Gratton, Steven E. Petersen, Maital Neta

Center for Brain, Biology, and Behavior: Faculty Publications

Cortical task control networks, including the cingulo-opercular (CO) network play a key role in decision-making across a variety of functional domains. In particular, the CO network functions in a performance reporting capacity that supports successful task performance, especially in response to errors and ambiguity. In two studies testing the contribution of the CO network to ambiguity processing, we presented a valence bias task in which masked clearly and ambiguously valenced emotional expressions were slowly revealed over several seconds. This slow reveal task design provides a window into the decision-making mechanisms as they unfold over the course of a trial. In …

Needham’S Girls: A Historical Case Study Of Gender And Mentoring In Entomology, Pat Munday

Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences Articles

James G. Needham (1868-1958) was a professor of entomology at Cornell University from 1906 to 1936, and an active emeritus for about ten years thereafter. As a professor, mentored many women graduate students at Cornell, a group that included twenty-nine who took doctorates. As a scientist, he was a member of an extensive network that included many more women entomologists. These women were located throughout the United States and Canada. Some had been his students at Cornell, some were colleagues with whom he did fieldwork, and others were young women who, even though students at colleges other than Cornell, worked …

Determining The Structure And Function Of A Bacteriophage Called Leozinho, Leonardo Rodrigues Venturotti

Biology Student Work

A research team, having discovered a bacteriophage named Leozinho a couple of years ago, embarked on a mission to unravel the structure of an unidentified gene, gp_61. They utilized ESMatlas, Foldseek, and ChimeraX to predict the structure of gp_61 and afterwards various laboratory procedures were employed to facilitate the growth of the gene. Ultimately, the experiment was concluded with the successful cloning of gp_61 into a plasmid vector for protein expression.

Demographic Analysis Of The Human Communities Of Tangier And Smith Islands: Part I, Ebony Arauz Tellez, Lucy Ellis, Rachel M. Griffith, Abigail Marple, Melissa C. Rhoten, Mark Fink

Fall Showcase for Research and Creative Inquiry

Demography is defined as the study of population characteristics, such as age structure, sex ratio, and growth rate and also seeks to explain the underlying processes responsible for these characteristics. Populations change with time through the combined effects of births/deaths and immigration/emigration. Although all four of these processes are extremely important, this project focuses on births, survival, and deaths. We collected and analyzed records of age at death that have been preserved in the cemeteries of Tangier Island, Virginia and Smith Island, Maryland. Following our experiences on these Chesapeake islands, we developed hypotheses and used survivorship curves to focus on …

Demographic Analysis Of The Human Communities Of Tangier And Smith Islands: Part Ii, Nicolas Freeman, Antonio Harvey, Joseph Jackson, Melissa C. Rhoten, Mark Fink

Fall Showcase for Research and Creative Inquiry

Demography is defined as the study of population characteristics, such as age structure, sex ratio, and growth rate and also seeks to explain the underlying processes responsible for these characteristics. Populations change with time through the combined effects of births/deaths and immigration/emigration. Although all four of these processes are extremely important, this project focuses on births, survival, and deaths. We collected and analyzed records of age at death that have been preserved in the cemeteries of Tangier Island, Virginia and Smith Island, Maryland. Following our experiences on these Chesapeake islands, we developed hypotheses and used survivorship curves to focus on …

A Comparison Of The Biodiversity Of Two Chesapeake Bay Islands, Ebony Arauz Tellez, Lyndsey Brown, Alexzandria Davis, Lucy Ellis, Nicolas Freeman, Rachel M. Griffith, Antonio Harvey, Joseph Jackson, Abigail Marple, Shae Sloan, Melissa C. Rhoten, Mark Fink

Fall Showcase for Research and Creative Inquiry

This poster presents a survey of the biodiversity encountered on Tangier Island, Virginia and Smith Island, Maryland during our fall break excursion (October 4-8, 2023) for CTZN 327, Stewardship of Public Waterways. We recorded species information or took pictures of plants and animals for later identification. The data collected allowed some conclusions to be drawn on the similarities and differences in biodiversity in these two Chesapeake Bay island communities.

Benthic Macroinvertebrate Populations And Water Quality Of Aquatic Systems, Nicholas Duellman

Fall Showcase for Research and Creative Inquiry

Macroinvertebrates are key indicators of aquatic health. We surveyed 3 distinct locations in the Appomattox River basin to gather data regarding conductivity and water temperature correlation on species diversity among three locations. There were significant correlations between species diversity and conductivity.

Gsl Researcher (Fall 2023)

GSL Researcher

GSL Researcher (Fall 2023)

Greetings

People

Range and pasture update

Technical note

Ranch update

Highlighted research

GSL Open House agenda

GSL spotlight

Nhm 726: Applied Regression Analysis In Nutrition And Hospitality Management, Hyun-Woo (David) Joung Ph.D.

GMAS Course Syllabi

No abstract provided.

Editorial: Research Advances Of Modification And Nutrition Properties Of Food Carbohydrates, Volume I, Yanjun Zhang, Jianhua Xie, Bin Li, Srinivas Janaswamy

Dairy Science and Food Science Faculty Publications: 2022 to Present

As a group of essential biopolymers, carbohydrates exist widely in living organisms and play many known and unknown biological roles in life activities via different pathways. Carbohydrates are widely used in foodstuffs, pharmaceuticals, biofuels, and biomaterials, to name a few. Parallelly, a growing understanding and deeper investigation drive the development of natural carbohydrates for novel applications, especially for treating chronic diseases, e.g., hyperlipidemia, obesity, and diabetes. The emerging evidence indicates that carbohydrates are effective for modulating gut microbiota, a vital organ in health and diseases. In addition, modifying carbohydrates alters and/or enhances nutrition properties, further expanding their application potential. Notably, …

Dynamics And Inhibition Of Abc And Rnd Transporters Associated With Multidrug Resistances In Cancer And Pathogenic Bacteria, Hang Zhao

Biological Sciences Theses and Dissertations

The overexpression of efflux transporters is deemed to be one of the important mechanisms that contribute to Multidrug Resistance (MDR). In this dissertation, three transporters of significance were studied, the Breast Cancer Resistance Protein (BCRP/ABCG2) in a variety of cancer cells, the mtrCDE transporter from Neisseria gonorrhoeae, and the acrAB-tolC transporter from Escherichia coli. It is well known that the overexpression of BCRP in cancer cells results in these cells being resistant to the effects of many chemotherapeutics. This results in multidrug resistance for this cancer because of the fact that BCRP can transport many different types of …

The Coastal Monitor: Vol. 10 No. 2, John Tanacredi Ph.D.

The Coastal Monitor

Stephen J. Gould’s prophetic piece, “The Golden Rule: A Proper Scale for Our Environmental Crisis”, noted that, “Patience enjoys a long pedigree of favor”, which he elaborated, “usually involves a deep understanding of the fundamental principle… rarely grasped in daily life – the effects of scale.” Scientists observe changes incessantly, in dimensions and time, from microscopic conditions of cellular biology to the inconceivable distances of galaxies and their influences on Earth.