Life Sciences Commons^™

Forages And Technology Management In Growing And Finishing Beef Cattle Systems, Kelton Adair

Theses and Dissertations in Animal Science

A systems study evaluated the effects of an implant [25.7 mg estradiol (Compudose; Elanco Animal Health)] at two rates of gain (LOW: 0.45 kg/d and HIGH: 0.9 kg/d) applied during the winter backgrounding phase in drylot and winter grazing systems and its effects on subsequent phases of production. HIGH supplementation with an implant during the winter backgrounding phase in the drylot system yielded the greatest ending body weight (EBW) during the summer backgrounding phase (P = 0.04). LOW supplementation, without an implant, improved summer backgrounding average daily gain (ADG; P = 0.05) while achieving similar carcass adjusted final body …

Bsc 345 Southern Miss Gulf Scholars Program Module, Southern Miss Gulf Scholars Program

Southern Miss Gulf Scholars

BSC 345 Southern Miss Gulf Scholars Program Curriculum

Throughout this course students will learn about important marine resources that drive the local seafood economy. On a field trip to the Maritime and Seafood Museum, students will learn about this historical seafood industry and industry practices. Student will also tour the USM Thad Cochran Marine Aquaculture Center to learn about modern aquaculture technologies and take an excursion at sea to observe the off-bottom aquaculture site next to Deer Island.

Examining The Use Of Expressive Arts Therapies In Neurorehabilitation Treatment Planning, Rebecca J. Horner

Expressive Therapies Capstone Theses

Those undergoing neurorehabilitation after stroke and traumatic brain injury report a diminished sense of overall wellness. This paper examines the conceivable benefits of introducing expressive arts therapies, which is the therapeutic use and combination of the visual arts, movement, drama, music, writing and other intermodal creative processes, into physical therapy and neurorehabilitation treatment planning. Expressive arts therapies have the capacity to engage with an individual’s physical, emotional, social and spiritual states concurrently. They simultaneously offer the ability to promote an increased sense of well-being, address mind-body disconnects, and process trauma non-verbally.

The sections of this narrative literature review focus on …

Professional Experience At Farmington High School, Jacob Vorhies

Master of Science in Kinesiology

For my Capstone project I chose to do a professional industry experience was at Farmington High School with Scott Meier, Head of Strength and Conditioning. The goals for this experience were to improve my skills in proper form identification, providing instructions, and program development. I spent two and a half months with Mr. Meier assisting him in his weight training classes and working directly with the students. For the research project component, I conducted a literature review and presented a PowerPoint presentation to five high school weightlifting classes on the importance of sleep and its effects on athletic performance. This …

Patterns And Sources Of Variation In Heterospecific Pollen Deposition In Flowers Of The Native Blue Cardinal Flower (Lobelia Siphilitica), Allie Drinnon

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Plants species interactions via pollinators are a model system to understand the mechanisms that generate plant diversity in nature. However, most studies have focused on plant-plant interactions via pollinator attraction while ignoring the role of plant-plant interactions via pollen transfer. Heterospecific pollen transfer (henceforth HP) can be common and have negative fitness effects. Negative HP fitness effects may prompt the evolution of adaptive strategies to minimize them. However, the extent of spatial variation in HP load size within and among populations, a tenet for natural selection, remains unexplored. Such knowledge would hence constitute a first step in advancing our understanding …

The Study Of A Generalized Fitness Education Program's Effect On Personality Traits, Garrett Schliep

Theses/Capstones/Creative Projects

This longitudinal study was to measure the influence of a generalized fitness education program on the percentile of individuals’ personality traits in college aged individuals. The personality traits are those determined in the Five Factor Model of Personality. The Five Factor Model of Personality is a beneficial tool used in exercise psychology that refers to a broad domain of personality traits often referred to as the “Big Five”. The findings reject the hypothesis that a fitness education program would shift an individual’s personality a statistically significant amount.

Mitochondrial Roles In Developmentally Programmed Heart Disease, Eli John Louwagie

Dissertations and Theses

Offspring of diabetic and obese mothers (ODOM) have greater risks of heart disease at birth and later in life. However, prevention is hindered because underlying mechanisms are poorly understood. Mounting studies in the Developmental Origins of Health and Disease field suggest that mitochondria play key roles in developmentally programmed heart disease similar to the roles they play in cardiomyopathy in adults with diabetes and obesity. However, whether mitochondria are responsible for the short[1]and long-term cardiac disease seen in ODOM remains unknown. Here, we sought to delineate the roles of mitochondria in the hearts of ODOM, determine whether mitochondria are playing …

Pharmacokinetics Of Cbd Supplementation In Horses: Single Dose Vs. Long-Term Feeding, Madilyn Adamchik

Honors College Theses

Research about supplemental feeding of cannabidiol (CBD) to horses is still in its early stages, but many horse owners are feeding CBD supplements for supposed benefits, including behavior and pain management. Cannabinoids work through the endocannabinoid system to modulate nervous and hormonal actions in the body, working to maintain a healthy homeostatic balance. Safety and efficacy have been tested for dosages of up to 500 mg of CBD per day for horses, but further research about the pharmacokinetics based on dosage amount and form of CBD are still needed. The objectives of this study were to evaluate the pharmacokinetics of …

Assessing Stream Ecosystem Structure And Function In An Urban Canal And Logan River In Logan, Utah, Ellie Smith-Eskridge

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Humans have constructed canals to support agriculture, to mitigate flooding, and to discharge stormwater, especially in the Intermountain West. These canals are common in Cache Valley, where they receive flows from the Logan River during summer months. However, the ecological structure (e.g., water quality, freshwater invertebrates) and function (e.g., leaf decomposition) of these canals remains largely unknown. Studying ecosystem structure and function of these urban waterways is important because it can inform us of the health of these waterways.

My research had three objectives. First, I compared water chemistry, invertebrate assemblages, and leaf decomposition in an urban canal and the …

Local And Regional Landscape Characteristics Driving Habitat Selection By Greater Sage-Grouse Along A Fragmented Range Margin, Aidan T. Beers

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In response to ongoing landscape change, wildlife species are likely to respond in varied ways. By studying habitat specialists, we are able to better understand the most likely ways in which the denizens of threatened ecosystems will react to those changes. Among the most threatened ecosystem types in North America are sagebrush ecosystems of the Intermountain West, where one of its most well-known residents, greater sage grouse (hereafter, “sage-grouse), have lost more than 50% of their habitat due to fire, invasive species, climate change, encroachment by coniferous forests and avian predators using it, and human-caused landscape conversion. Sage-grouse rely on …

Pharmacokinetics Of Single Feeding Of Cannabidiol In Cattle: A Pilot Study, Haley Cornette

Honors College Theses

Cannabidiol (CBD) is a substance that has been used in complementary medicine for many years. However, modern medicine has little knowledge of how this substance is utilized and metabolized in ruminant animals. Regulations on quality assurance and use in animals are lacking, and CBD supplementation in livestock is not approved. If CBD supplements can be shown to be safe and effective, detection in the animal will be important for determining regulation of use. A withdrawal period can then be established to allow time for deterioration of product to safe levels before livestock products enter human markets. This study sought to …

Targeted Mapping Of Oryza Sativa Chilling Tolerance Candidate Genes Using Multiple Stress-Relevant Quantitative Traits, Naoki Simon Shimoyama

Dissertations (1934 -)

Developing chilling tolerant accessions of domesticated Asian rice is a potential source of significant crop improvement to address the needs of a growing global population. The uniquely chilling sensitive nature of the tropically originating Oryza sativa make it the most important staple crop that could gain the maximum benefit from improved tolerance to low temperature stress. However, mechanisms underlying this complex trait are not fully understood. Oryza sativa has two major varietal groups with different levels of chilling tolerance, JAPONICA and INDICA, providing an ideal tool to investigate mechanistic differences in the chilling stress tolerance responses within this important crop …

A Draft Of The Genome Of The Gulf Coast Tick, Amblyomma Maculatum, Jose M.C. Ribeiro, Natalia J. Bayona-Vásquez, Khemraj Budachetri, Deepak Kumar, Julia Catherine Frederick, Faizan Tahir, Brant C. Faircloth, Travis C. Glenn, Shahid Karim

Faculty Publications

The Gulf Coast tick, Amblyomma maculatum, inhabits the Southeastern states of the USA bordering the Gulf of Mexico, Mexico, and other Central and South American countries. More recently, its U.S. range has extended West to Arizona and Northeast to New York state and Connecticut. It is a vector of Rickettsia parkeri and Hepatozoon americanum. This tick species has become a model to study tick/Rickettsia interactions. To increase our knowledge of the basic biology of A. maculatum we report here a draft genome of this tick and an extensive functional classification of its proteome. The DNA from a single …

2d Respiratory Sound Analysis To Detect Lung Abnormalities, Rafia Sharmin Alice, Kc Santosh

SDSU Data Science Symposium

Abstract. In this paper, we analyze deep visual features from 2D data representation(s) of the respiratory sound to detect evidence of lung abnormalities. The primary motivation behind this is that visual cues are more important in decision-making than raw data (lung sound). Early detection and prompt treatments are essential for any future possible respiratory disorders, and respiratory sound is proven to be one of the biomarkers. In contrast to state-of-the-art approaches, we aim at understanding/analyzing visual features using our Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN) tailored Deep Learning Models, where we consider all possible 2D data such as Spectrogram, Mel-frequency Cepstral Coefficients …

Low Molecular Weight Cyclin E Deregulates Dna Replication And Damage Repair To Promote Genomic Instability In Breast Cancer, Mi Li

The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center UTHealth Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences Dissertations and Theses (Open Access)

Low molecular weight cyclin E (LMW-E) are oncogenic forms of cyclin E that are post translationally generated by neutrophil elastase (NE) mediated cleavage of the 50 KDa full-length cyclin E1 (FL-cycE, encoded by CCNE1gene). The resultant N-terminus deleted (40 amino acids) form of LMW-E is detected in breast cancer cells and tumor tissues, but not in normal mammary epithelial cells or adjacent normal tissues. Unlike FL-cycE, LMW-E drives mammary epithelial cell transformation in human cells and spontaneous mammary tumor formation in transgenic mouse models, but the oncogenic mechanisms of LMW-E and its unique function(s) independent of FL-cycE are not …

Leveraging Bio-Inspired Molecules For Cancer Theranostics, Douglas S. Macpherson

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

A variety of molecules can be radiolabeled and delivered to a cancer site for the purposes of diagnostics and therapy. Among the most promising of tumor targeting molecules are peptides and antibodies. These bio-inspired molecules can be designed and synthesized to target and respond to cancer cells based on the properties of those cells. Matrix metalloproteinase (MMP) enzymes are over-expressed by some metastatic cancers, in which they are responsible for the degradation and remodeling of the extracellular matrix. In recent years, MMPs have emerged as promising targets for enzyme-responsive diagnostic probes because oligopeptides can be designed to be selectively hydrolyzed …

Grassland Productivity And Water Quality: A 21st Century Issue, David M. Nash, P. M. Haygarth

International Grassland Congress Proceedings

1. Irrigation and other changes to the hydrological cycle can increase soil and water salinity.
2. Primary salinisation is a natural process that affects much of Europe, Asia, Africa, the Americas and Australia. Secondary salinisation is caused by human activities such as irrigation and land clearing that mobilise salt stored in the soil.
3. The critical water contaminants exported from grasslands are nitrogen, phosphorus, potential pathogens and sediment.
4. The mechanisms responsible for diffuse pollution from grasslands and mitigation strategies are most effectively investigated using a ‘source-mobilisation-transport’ framework.
5. There is a lack of coherent interaction across discipline boundaries that links pollutant sources to impact. …

Water Resources, Agriculture And Pasture: Implications Of Growing Demand And Increasing Scarcity, M. W. Rosegrant, R. A. Valmonte-Santos, S. A. Cline, C. Ringler, W. Li

International Grassland Congress Proceedings

1. Water availability for irrigation is threatened in many regions by rapidly increasing demand for nonagricultural water uses in industry, households, and the environment. The scarcity of irrigation water will not only impact crop production, but also meat production, as much of the pasture used to feed livestock is irrigated.
2. Grassland is caught between two countervailing forces: a requirement for increasing meat demand that boosts the need for additional pasture to support livestock production, and rapidly increasing water scarcity that makes pasture irrigation uneconomical.
3. The most effective means of dealing with water scarcity is likely to be conserving water in existing …

Soil Quality Assessment And Management, M. G. Kibblewhite

International Grassland Congress Proceedings

1. Soil quality is related to the capacity of soil to deliver ecosystem services on a sustainable basis.
2. Effective management of soil within grasslands can deliver many benefits to mankind but poor management may cause loss of soil quality from erosion, loss of organic matter, physical deterioration etc.
3. Services are delivered from soil by biological processes. Soil quality depends on the form and condition of the soil habitat. Fixed factors (e.g. texture) are useful for assigning soil to types. Variable factors (e.g. organic carbon) can then be used to assess quality within soil types, by reference to percentiles of the distribution …

Soil Microbial Community: Understanding The Belowground Network For Sustainable Grassland Management, Y. G. Zhu, W. D. Kong, B. D. Chen, Z. B. Nan, P. Christie

International Grassland Congress Proceedings

1. In addition to the use of conventional methodologies in soil microbial research, molecular techniques are now being applied to gain insights into the soil microbial community;
2. Plant diversity can exert impacts on soil microbial diversity (through root activities and plant litter etc.), but may in itself be significantly altered by soil properties;
3. Soil microbial diversity largely determines the stability of soil ecosystems under biotic and abiotic perturbations.
4. Management of soil microbial diversity can only be achieved through better understanding their structures and functions.