Other Life Sciences Commons^™

Nutrient Limitation In Three Lowland Tropical Forests In Southern China Receiving High Nitrogen Deposition: Insights From Fine Root Responses To Nutrient Additions, Feifei Zhu, Muneoki Yoh, Frank S. Gilliam, Xiankai Lu, Jiangming Mo

Biological Sciences Faculty Research

Elevated nitrogen (N) deposition to tropical forests may accelerate ecosystem phosphorus (P) limitation. This study examined responses of fine root biomass, nutrient concentrations, and acid phosphatase activity (APA) of bulk soil to five years of N and P additions in one old-growth and two younger lowland tropical forests in southern China. The old-growth forest had higher N capital than the two younger forests from long-term N accumulation. From February 2007 to July 2012, four experimental treatments were established at the following levels: Control, N-addition (150 kg N ha^–1 yr^–1), P-addition (150 kg P ha^–1 yr^{–1 …}

Common Core 4th Grade Environmental Science Lesson Plans For California Teachers, Gillian Schoenfeld

Natural Resources Management and Environmental Sciences

This project and its analyses were conducted to assist California fourth grade elementary school teachers in adjusting to teaching Common Core standards and science curriculum in their classrooms. The project included the creation of lesson plans, which could be utilized throughout the state of California.

As the Common Core standards, California’s Next Generation Science Standards for K- 12, were just proposed in June of 2013, these lesson plans would help teachers update their lessons and provide them materials and concepts of how to do so. These lessons provide higher-order thinking for students, which is the whole concept of the new …

Population Dynamics Of The Louisiana Black Bear In The Upper Atchafalaya River Basin, Kaitlin Christine O'Connell

Masters Theses

The Louisiana black bear (Ursus americanus luteolus) is listed as Threatened under the Endangered Species Act as a result of habitat loss and human-related mortality. Two of the 3 sub-populations must be viable for delisting to occur. I collected hair samples from 2010 to 2012 in a DNA mark-recapture study to augment data collected from 2007 to 2009 in the Upper Atchafalaya River Basin (UARB) to estimate abundance (N), growth rate (λ), and apparent survival rates (φ) to ultimately be used in a population viability analysis. In addition, I evaluated the effects of the opening of the …

Decomposition Patterns And Nitrogen Dynamics Of Black Mangrove (Avicennia Germinans)Leaf Litter In Disturbed Estuaries Linked To The Lower Laguna Madre, Texas, Mario Alberto Marquez

Theses and Dissertations - UTB/UTPA

Estuaries are among the most productive aquatic systems in the world but are subject to both anthropogenic and natural disturbances. With increasing environmental concerns, efforts have become commonplace in assessing the status and trends of environmental conditions. In this study, an assessment of ecosystem status of various estuaries affected by different disturbances, was attempted through the examination of key functional processes such as leaf litter decomposition and nutrient dynamics during decay. Three estuaries located along the Brownsville Ship Channel near the southern terminus of the Lower Laguna Madre in Texas were studied. The overlying goal of this study was to …

Welcome To The Journal Of Evolution And Health, Aaron Blaisdell, Paul Jaminet, David C. Pendergrass

Aaron P Blaisdell

Welcome to the first issue of the Journal of Evolution and Health! The Journal of Evolution and Health is the peer-reviewed, open-access journal of the Ancestral Health Society, a community of scientists, healthcare professionals, and laypersons who collaborate to understand health challenges from an evolutionary perspective.

Common Raven Density And Greater Sage-Grouse Nesting Success In Southern Wyoming: Potential Conservation And Management Implications, Jonathan B. Dinkins

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Declines in the distribution and abundance of greater sage-grouse (Centrocercus urophasianus; hereafter "sage-grouse") in western North America over the past century have been severe. The goal of my research was to increase the understanding of factors influencing where sage-grouse hens placed their nests, how common ravens (Corvus corax: hereafter "raven") impacted sage-grouse nest success, and whether high raptor densities negatively impacted hen survival of sage-grouse. I compared raven and raptor densities at sage-grouse nest and brood locations to available habitat. I also assessed how sage-grouse positioned their nests and broods relative to proximity to man-made structures, …

Biology Of Human Life Laboratory Manual, Lee Lee, Joseph Riggio, Tin-Chun Chu

Tin-Chun Chu, Ph.D.

No abstract provided.

Amphibian Occupancy And Functional Connectivity Of Restored Wetlands In The Missouri River Floodplain, Michelle L. Hellman

School of Natural Resources: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Wetland decline may threaten many taxa including shorebirds, amphibians, and fish. As agencies increase restoration of wetland habitat, monitoring is crucial to inform the process. Permeable skin sensitive to water quality and biphasic life histories requiring both terrestrial and aquatic habitat make amphibians good indicators of wetland health. I modeled amphibian occupancy in restored Missouri River bends to determine habitat characteristics associated with the presence of amphibians.

Occupancy modeling acknowledges imperfect detection and allows the inclusion of detection covariates. To assess detection I examined two methods currently used to assess anuran occupancy in wetlands, aural anuran surveys and tadpole dip-netting. …

Rutting Behavior And Factors Influencing Vehicle Collisions Of White-Tailed Deer In Middle Tennessee, Peyton Seth Basinger

Masters Theses

White-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus; deer) and human populations have expanded, and as a result, deer-vehicle collisions (DVCs) have become a primary concern. In particular, Arnold Air Force Base (AAFB) in Tullahoma, Tennessee, USA has had extensive problems with DVCs and has struggled to incorporate effective mitigation strategies. To address this issue, I initiated a study on AAFB to investigate deer behavior and factors increasing the likelihood of DVCs.

DVCs typically increase with peaks in deer activity during the breeding season (rut). I deployed GPS-ARGOS satellite collars on 10 adult males and 10 females during the summer of 2010. …

Legacy Effects Of Habitat Degradation By Lesser Snow Geese On Ground-Nesting Savannah Sparrows Along The Hudson Bay Lowlands, Stephen L. Peterson

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Little is known of the direct and indirect legacy of Lesser Snow Goose (LSGO) habitat degradation in northern Canada on the biodiversity of other avian species. It is believed that a human-induced trophic cascade caused in part by agricultural habitat modification along migratory routes and wintering grounds has contributed to the increase in LSGO numbers, which has resulted in increased foraging pressure by LSGO on northern breeding and stopover sites. This habitat degradation may lead to decreased abundance and richness of Arctic / sub-Arctic avian species across landscapes that LSGO utilize and degrade.

Here we evaluated the annual change in …

Mule Deer And Wildlife Crossings In Utah, Usa, Megan Schwender

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Wildlife-vehicle collisions (WVCs) negatively impact wildlife populations and create dangerous driving situations for motorists. In Utah, USA, mule deer (Odocoileus hemionus) encounter a variety of hazards as they attempt to cross highways and interstates, some of which are 8 lanes wide. Agencies have sought to mitigate the risks posed to drivers and mule deer by building crossing structures for wildlife. The objectives of this study were to evaluate the effectiveness of crossing structures in Utah to safely pass mule deer under highways and to determine the variables that best explain mule deer passage use. From 2008 - 2011 …

Importance Of Grass-Legume Choices On Cattle Grazing Behavior And Performance, Brody Todd Maughan

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Livestock production systems have emphasized low diversity of high-producing forage species dependent upon costly fossil-fuel inputs. However, diversity of plants in natural systems is common, and diverse plant communities enable herbivores to meet needs for nutrition and health. Plants provide herbivores with nutrients and bioactive compounds – plant secondary compounds (SCs), which at appropriate concentrations can reduce internal parasites and greenhouse gas emissions, improve nutrient utilization and enhance meat quality in ruminants. In addition, SCs confer plants more resistance to environmental challenges such as drought or pests.

With my MS program, I sought to explore foraging behavior in cattle grazing …

Development Of Sediment Budgets At Multiple Scales, Susannah O'Brien Erwin

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Channel morphology in alluvial rivers is determined by the flow of water and sediment, and the characteristics of the materials making up the channel boundary. Many modern river management problems depend upon our ability to predict channel behavior in response to changes in the delivery of water or sediment. Sediment delivery to a river may be altered by natural or human-caused changes, such as changes in land use in the watershed, construction and operations of dam, forest fires, or climate change. Understanding and predicting the effects of these alterations is important because changes in sediment supply and transport may alter …

Effects Of Inorganic Nutrients And Dissolved Organic Carbon On Oxygen Demand In Select Rivers In Northern Utah, Joseph L. Crawford

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Our nation’s waterways are a valuable resource whose quality is influenced by their surroundings as well the amount of nutrients (largely nitrogen and phosphorus) in the water. Nutrients play an important role in aquatic ecosystems; however, if nutrient levels become too high, it is detrimental to water quality. Excess fertilizer that runs off of agricultural land and into the rivers and streams is a common source of nutrients in our waterways. Other sources of nitrogen and phosphorus include effluent released from wastewater facilities.

There are many negative side effects of high nutrients in the water. They can create large algal …

Greater Sage-Grouse Habitat Selection And Use Patterns In Response To Vegetation Management Practices In Northwestern Utah, Stephanie E. Graham

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Greater sage-grouse (Centrocercus urophasianus; sage-grouse) are a sagebrush obligate species and an indicator of sagebrush (Artemisia spp.) habitat quality. Sage-grouse populations have declined across western North America. Fragmentation of landscapes and habitat loss have been identified as factors that negatively impact sage-grouse populations. Wildfires can increase the distribution of invasive plants and contribute to fragmentation and habitat loss across sagebrush ecosystems. Greenstripping has been identified as a technique to reduce the threat of wildfire and subsequent spread of invasive species. Forage kochia (Bassia prostrata) is a semi-shrub that contains a high moisture content year-round, high …

Modeling Usa Stream Temperatures For Stream Biodiversity And Climate Change Assessments, Ryan A. Hill

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Stream temperature in one of the most biologically important aspects of water quality, but we lack temperature information for the vast majority of streams within the USA. Stream temperature can be influenced by several types of landscape and waterway alteration including upstream urbanization, agriculture, and reservoir releases. Stream temperatures are also expected to be affected by climate change over the next
century. We need to know how stream temperatures vary naturally, how they are influenced by human activity, and how they will respond to climate changes to effectively manage stream ecosystems. I used data from several thousand streams within the …

Effects Of Age On Induced Glaucoma In An In Vivo Rat Model, Robert Cox

Honors Theses

Previous in vitro studies from this lab have demonstrated that injection of a hypertonic saline solution into the episcleral vein of the rat’s eye mimics the effect of glaucoma. However, the age of the rat related to the amount of cell loss in the retina ganglion cell (RGC) layer is unknown. To address this issue, we propose to analyze the correlation of age and cell loss between 3-6 month and 1-year-old Long Evan rats. When inducing glaucoma in the Long Evan rats, the left eye in each rat was left untreated and used as an internal control. In the right …

Flash4 Dark Reference Images, George Mcnamara

George McNamara

Hamamatsu FLASH4.0 dark reference images, acquired with 10 second exposure times, no light to camera. Camera offset (set by Hamamatsu( is ~100 (the average intensity of the first image is always ~1 intensity level higher - an odd feature, but trivial in practice for a 16-bit camera).

George McNamara, Ph.D.

Single Cells Analyst at L.J.N. Cooper Lab

University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center

Governing Occupation Through Constructions Of Risk: The Case Of The Aging Driver, Silke Dennhardt

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Risk and risk-management have become increasingly pervasive features of modern society and governmentality scholars have highlighted various ways risk discourses are taken up to govern citizens and their everyday conduct. Thus, attending to risk is imperative to advance an understanding of how everyday occupation is shaped and governed within contemporary society. Within this study, the example of driving in later life is drawn upon to address two objectives: 1. to advance the understanding of how risk is taken up to govern everyday occupation, and 2. to explicate how risk is taken up in discourses to constitute particular subjectivities and their …

Intraocular Pressure Measurements In A Rat Glaucoma Model, Michael Doyle

Honors Theses

The main objective of this study was to determine if consistent intraocular pressure (IOP) measurements could be obtained from an in vivo Long Evans rat glaucoma model. An increase in IOP is the primary risk factor associated with glaucoma and reliable IOP measurements would validate our in vivo glaucoma model that we are inducing in rats. The study used nine Long Evans rats. Three rats severed as controls, three received surgery to induce glaucoma and three were administered PNU-282987 neuroprotective eye drops and then surgery to induce glaucoma. IOP measurements were obtained by tapping the retina of the rat eye …

Video Codec Performance (Excel Spreadsheet), George Mcnamara

George McNamara

Video codec performance (Excel spreadsheet). Movie was made in 2005-2006 when I worked at City of Hope National Medical Center. VTLF refers to Video Timelapse Light Facility. Videos were outputted from MetaMorph as AVI files. Personally, I always recommend uncompressed video files fro scientific uses. I also encourage posting the original scientific data format (ex. .lsm, .zvi, .lif, .stk).

Pubspectra Tattletales, George Mcnamara

George McNamara

Tattletales for Multiplex Fluorescent Reporters in Single Cells for Metabolomics

George McNamara

As of April 2013: L.J.N. Cooper & D.A. Lee Cellular Immunotherapy Lab, University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, TX

Email: gtmcnamara@mdanderson.org, geomcnamara@earthlink.net

Tattletales is my concept for spatial multiplexing many fluorescent protein (FP) biosensors in the same live cell. For example, there are excellent FP biosensors to Ca++ ions, pH, glucose, ribose, glutamine, glutamate, ATP, redox, ROS, pyruvate, cAMP, cGMP, IP3, PI(3,4,5)P3, cell cycle indicators (Fucci2), PKA, PKC, photsphatases, caspase(s) [1, 2]. However, these are typically used one biosensor per experiment, due in part to flooding …

“A Message From Your Body: How To Remove Toxicity In Yourself And In The Practice Of Law”, Jalae Ulicki

Jalae Ulicki

No abstract provided.

Vernal Pool Vegetation And Soil Patterns Along Hydrologic Gradients In Western Massachusetts, Kasie Collins

Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014

This study looks at relationships along the hydrologic gradient between and within six pools; including the vegetation community, soil characteristics and hydrology. Pool conditions were monitored weekly throughout the 2011 and 2012 growing seasons. Each pool was equipped with permanent platinum-tipped redox probes to quantify the severity and duration of soil reduction. We described and analyzed 12 soil profiles in each pool, distributed in summit/upland, basin, and rim/transition positions as defined by the high water line. The pools were systematically surveyed for understory vegetation during the 2012 growing season.

Vegetation patterns varied between study areas. No clear pattern of unique …

Histone Biotinylation In Candida Albicans, Sahar Hasim, Swetha Tati, Nandakumar Madayiputhiya, Renu Nandakumar, Kenneth W. Nickerson

Kenneth Nickerson Papers

Candida albicans is an opportunistic fungal pathogen in humans. It is a polymorphic fungus: it can live as yeasts, hyphae, or pseudohyphae. Biotin is required for cell growth and fatty acid metabolism because it is used as a cofactor for carboxylases such as acetyl-CoA carboxylase, and pyruvate carboxylase. In addition, we have discovered that biotin is used to modify histones in C. albicans. Biotinylation was detected by Western blots using a monoclonal antibiotin HRP-conjugated antibody as well as with qTOF and LC/MS/MS mass spectrometry. As a precaution, the antibiotin antibody was dialyzed against neutravidin prior to use. During this study, …

Los Hongos Comestibles De La Región De Molango De Escamilla, Hidalgo, México, Miriam Jiménez-González, Leticia Romero-Bautista, Miguel Ángel Villavicencio-Nieto, Blanca Estela Pérez-Escandón

Estudios científicos en el estado de Hidalgo y zonas aledañas

Se realizaron 28 salidas a la región de Molango de Escamilla entre los años 2004-2006, en la temporada de lluvias con el fin de obtener los cuerpos fructíferos de los hongos que son consumidos en la región, así como recopilar los nombres comunes e identificar las especies. Se aplicaron entrevistas estructuradas, semiestructuradas y abiertas. Se identificaron 19 especies y en este trabajo se describen 13. Las especies comestibles mayormente consumidas fueron Pleurotus djamor, Cantharellus odoratus, Armillaria tabescens, Polyporus alveolaris y Amanita tecomate. Se reporta por primera vez en la región el uso comestible de Russula cessans, Russula virescens, Russula aff. …

Pbl Waste Not Want Not: Using Agricultural Plant Waste, Illinois Mathematics And Science Academy

Teacher Resources

This sample Problem Based Learning (PBL) lesson focuses on the best use for agricultural waste, using an apple orchard as the hypothetical problem. The unit is designed as a sample curriculum for educators learning the PBL process.

How Parental Divorce During Emerging Adulthood Gives Meaning To Women’S Experiences: A Phenomenological Approach, Kayla Reed

Theses and Dissertations--Family Sciences

This study examined how parental divorce impacts emerging adults’ familial relationships, romantic relationships, and development to build a basis for understanding emerging adult experiences. The participant sample consisted of 8 females between the ages of 19 and 24 (M = 21.6). A qualitative transcendental or psychological phenomenological research method was used. 90-minute interviews were conducted focusing on romantic relationships, family relationships, reactions and thoughts of parental divorce, and self-perception. NVIVO was used to allow a “bottom-up” design, emergent design, and interpretive inquiry for data analysis. Three themes emerged from the data: impacts of family dynamics, effects of developmental stage, and …

Candida Albicans Czf1 And Efg1 Coordinate The Response To Farnesol During Quorum Sensing, White-Opaque Thermal Dimorphism, And Cell Death, Melanie L. Langford, Jessica C. Hargarten, Krista D. Patefield, Elizabeth Marta, Jill R. Blankenship, Saranna Fanning, Kenneth W. Nickerson, Audrey L. Atkin

Kenneth Nickerson Papers

Quorum sensing by farnesol in Candida albicans inhibits filamentation and may be directly related to its ability to cause both mucosal and systemic diseases. The Ras1-cyclic AMP signaling pathway is a target for farnesol inhibition. However, a clear understanding of the downstream effectors of the morphological farnesol response has yet to be unraveled. To address this issue, we screened a library for mutants that fail to respond to farnesol. Six mutants were identified, and the czf1/czf1 mutant was selected for further characterization. Czf1 is a transcription factor that regulates filamentation in embedded agar and also whiteto- opaque switching. We found …

Bioactive Natural Products, A. Hamid A. Hadi, Ana Belen Martin-Diana

Other resources

Bioactive natural products have never ceased to play an important role in the search of novel therapeutic agents. Natural products from the nature such as the plant and marine sources form an integral part of the living system, and they have existed ever since the beginning of life. Therefore, it is undeniable that works related to natural products continue to develop in many aspects involving researchers from various scientific backgrounds. This special issue is dedicated to compile twelve articles on chemical and biological aspects of research developments in natural products.