College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Chemistry

12017

Evaluation of a high-resolution regional climate ensemble

A high-resolution regional climate model is evaluated for its ability to predict climate conditions, particularly extreme events. The spatial extent of the model encompasses a rectangular area extending from Western Africa to the East Pacific covering North America. We focus on determining the best combinations of physical assumptions within the model that will result in realistic predictions of climate variability and extremes. Our approach employs a variety of statistical goodness of fit tests to identify the best model configurations with the ability to correctly simulate extreme temperature, precipitation, and hurricane statistics. Preliminary results indicate that the model performs well under certain combinations of internal physical assumptions. It replicates extremes well across much of North America but exhibits less accuracy in mountainous regions. (Flesh-Kincaid Grade Level: 18.4)

12012

No Response

Beginning from a rational choice perspective contending that elite cues, ideology or worldview, and exogenous environmental factors—most notably perceptions of economic conditions—affect Americans’ candidate and policy preferences, this paper incorporates perceptions of economic conditions, as measured by Consumer Confidence in a Florida Bureau of Economic and Business Research monthly representative sample for the state of Florida, measured both retrospectively and prospectively, to demonstrate that optimistic perceptions of future economic conditions decreases support for social welfare expenditures, specifically nutritional assistance. Additionally, the nested regression model demonstrates that the importance religious faith plays in an individual’s life does not affect support for government social welfare expenditures, while an individualistic or communitarian worldview, in addition to party identification, affects support. (Flesh-Kincaid Grade Level: 29.6)

11985

LIGHT Programs Activated CD8 T Cells To Survive And Become Memory Cells In Response To A Viral Pathogen

Respiratory viral infections cause significant morbidity and mortality worldwide and hence are a major human health problem. In light of this, understanding how the immune system responds to respiratory viral infections will be crucial in designing novel vaccines and therapeutics. Previous research from our lab and others has shown that CD8 T cells are important in protecting against respiratory viral infections. To date, however, development of an effective vaccine that can generate protective CD8 T cell response against respiratory viruses remains elusive. Emerging evidence is suggesting that Tumor Necrosis Factor (TNF) family members are crucial for the effective function of CD8 T cells in many types of immune response. LIGHT is one such TNF member, whose role during antiviral CD8 T cell response is relatively unexplored. In my doctoral dissertation research, I am using murine respiratory poxvirus infection model to identify the role of LIGHT in antiviral CD8 T cell response. Interestingly, my data suggests that LIGHT is crucial for development of memory CD8 T cells in the lungs, the primary goal of an effective vaccine. Overall, these studies will provide invaluable information that will help in designing effective CD8 T cell vaccines against respiratory viral infections. (Flesh-Kincaid Grade Level: 14.9)

11963

Histological Changes in the Subchondral Bone and Synovium Related to Heightened Limb Sensitivity In A Rat OA Model

"Osteoarthritis (OA) in the knee debilitates millions of adults in the United States. There is currently no cure, and the most common treatment is to manage patient pain with drugs until they become ineffective and the joint must be replaced surgically. Better therapeutic methods are sorely needed, but there is a disconnect between understanding how much damage a knee has sustained and how much pain a patient feels: a patient may be experiencing excruciating pain with no evidence of joint damage or exhibit severe joint degeneration with little or no painful side effects. Determining relationships between OA joint damage and painful symptoms will help direct the development and testing methods of new OA therapeutics. Our research group develops new ways to sensitively quantify OA-related joint damage and symptoms using rats in order to bridge the clinical gap.

Joint damage can be assessed in rodents with greater numbers and techniques than we can use for humans. Moreover, they will likely be the first model used to test a potential new OA drug. The work to be presented at the international conference for Osteoarthritis Research Society International explores new ways to measure OA-related changes within the joint and correlates them with the current gold-standard measure of mechanical pain. The novelty of this work lies in the changes observed in previously less explored tissues within the joint. Specifically, cartilage is the most obvious and popular tissue used to assess damage within the joint, but cartilage contains no nerves and has not correlated with patient pain thus far. We have observed changes in the joint capsule and bone, both of which contain nerves, which correlate significantly with painful behaviors. This work may influence how joint damage and painful OA symptoms are explored in the field at large.

11959

C-Met inhibition sensitivity in vitro: autocrine vs paracrine activation of the c-Met pathway

Traditional cancer therapy includes surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy. These methods are largely unsuccessful and result in serious side effects to the healthy tissue. Much of the recent cancer therapy research has focused on targeted therapy, selecting for proteins uniquely expressed by cancer cells. My research focuses on the protein c-Met, which is normally only activated during embryogenesis and wound healing. Tumor cells are often found to have high levels of this protein. C-Met is activated by a protein called Hepatocyte Growth Factor (HGF). Most cells will express either c-Met or HGF, but not both. There are some reports of tumor cells that do express both c-Met and HGF, and I predict that these tumors will be more sensitive to a therapy that inhibits the protein c-Met. In this poster, I compare several cell lines, some that express c-Met and HGF, and some that only expresses c-Met. When tested for migration and invasion (two functions that contribute to cancer aggression), the tumor cells that co-expressed c-Met and HGF were much more sensitive to a c-Met inhibitor. This could potentially help decide which patients would benefit best from c-Met therapy, and to choose those patients for participation in clinical trials. (Flesh-Kincaid Grade Level: 12.1)

11955

Devil's Den, Florida: Rare Earth Element (REE) Analysis Indicates Contemporaneity of Humans and Latest Pleistocene Fauna

"During archaeological excavations conducted in the Devil's Den sinkhole (Levy County, Florida), fossilized human bones were found in the same location as bones of long extinct animals. Direct dating using Carbon-14 was not possible because the bones were fossilized. We use a new technique, the analysis of Rare Earth Elements, as a relative dating method to determine whether the human bones are a similar age to or significantly younger than the bones of the extinct animals. The results of our study show that there is no statistically significant difference between the human bones and the extinct animal bones. This indicates that humans lived in Florida at the same time as the extinct animals. Because the date range for the extinction of these animals is known, we have determined that the human bones that we studied would be about 13,000 years old.

This study is significant because sites such as Devil's Den where human bones have been found alongside extinct animal bones are rare. This site is one of very few that can tell us about the relationship between humans and extinct animals. (Flesh-Kincaid Grade Level: 15.2)"

11940

College of Education - Mathematics Education

"I was invited to present this paper as part of a session on innovative and novel ways to assess statistics. LOCUS (Levels of Conceptual Understanding in Statist! ics) is a family of assessments developed through a National Science Foundation grant (NSF DRL-1118168) designed to measure conceptual – rather than procedural – understanding of statistics in students in grades 6-12. With the widespread adoption and implementation of the Common Core State Standards for Mathematics (CCSSM), the statistics expectations for students in grades 6-12 and their teachers have been increased dramatically.

Gone are the days when students learned only mean, median, and mode. Now, all students graduating grade 12 are expected to know how hypothesis testing works and be able to conduct simulations to answer questions. While the standards call for informal hypothesis testing and stop short of using results like the Central Limit Theorem and Normal Distribution, the amount and sophistication of statistics that are called for under the CCSSM will be a tremendous increase for many schools and districts.

If the statistics components of the CCSSM are going to be successful, they will need to be assessed well. Relying on assessments and practices developed prior to the adoption of the standards will result in a narrower, more procedural understanding than is envisioned. However, no assessments that measured more conceptual understanding existed, and so the LOCUS project was born. The LOCUS assessments are available in pencil-and-paper and online formats and are freely available to both classroom teachers and researchers. The assessments were written to be aligned with American Statistical Association’s Guidelines for Assessment and Instruction in Statistics Education (Franklin et al., 2007).

This presentation will introduce researchers to the assessments, the validity argument for their use, findings about current student knowledge, and the on-going work to validate them with teachers and college students. (Flesh-Kincaid Grade Level: 14.8)"

11923

Contact Zones: The Symbolics of (Cuban) Sugar in Mid-nineteenth Century English Texts

"Much of the existing scholarship on sugar in Victorian texts focuses heavily on sugar in the context of British abolition in the early nineteenth century, and, therefore, on sugar produced in formal British colonies such as Jamaica and Antigua.

However, this paper examines the previously overlooked question of how sugar became a symbolic space for mid-nineteenth century English writers to work out anxieties relating to the global trade networks that continued to bring slave-produced goods to England (after British abolition), such as slave-produced sugar imported from Cuba and slave-produced cotton imported from the United States.

Ultimately, my analysis of _North and South_ traces the ways that the circulation of goods and people in the text creates a contact zone between the fictional factory town of the novel and larger international contexts, such as the United States and Cuba--and also traces how debates about sugar in this context helped the English to work out their national identity in the face of these global networks. (Flesh-Kincaid Grade Level: 27.6)"

11922

Applying Adaptive Cycles to the Life History of Ancient Maya Agricultural Systems

My research focuses on ancient Maya agricultural strategies in order to better understand land use in ancient rural communities. This is accomplished by asking: W! hat role did intensive agricultural systems play in the resilience of ancient Maya centers? The resiliency of past subsistence strategies is revealed in the archaeological record by their ability to withstand and adapt to fluctuating variables while sustaining their essential purpose and identity. Fieldwork is conducted within the intensive agricultural terraces systems that surround the ancient Maya minor center of Waybil, Belize. Gaining an understanding of the resilience of past agricultural strategies necessitates a holistic multi-component approach to comprehend all the variables. The variables include chronology, production techniques, soil conditions, crop diversity, climatic conditions, and the social organization behind the construction and maintenance of agricultural systems. Variables are understood through a variety of methods; excavations, survey, pedeology, paleobotany, Geographic Information Systems, and remote sensing. These methods are combined to understan! d the entangled nature of this past socio-ecological system and modele d using the holistic approach of the Adaptive Cycle. Further, research examines the current agricultural strategy practiced around the site, through IRB approved interviews which revealed significant linkages between past and present strategies. This also facilitates an assessment of the resilience of the current strategies in light the resilience of the past practices. Providing the opportunity to address contemporary concerns and look forward to the sustainability of future agricultural practices. This research advances the understanding of ancient Maya social organization as well as the complexity and diversity of agricultural strategies. It outlines the importance of holistic, multi-component approaches to explore complex systems. In doing so it will be one of the few archaeological cases to fully test the applicability of resiliency and entangled socio-ecological systems, providing in-sight into the dynamics of interacting variables from past agricultural strategies. (Flesh-Kincaid Grade Level: 18.9)

11916

Optimization of rAAV to target ON bipolar cells and to rescue the nobnyx mouse an animal model of X-linked Congenital Stationary Night Blindness

Congenital Stationary Night Blindness (CSNB) is an inherited retinal disorder characterized by the inability to see in low light conditions, but also by profound defects in daytime vision. It is associated with mutations in genes expressed in secondary neurons called bipolar cells which are difficult to target with standard gene therapy vectors because they are sandwiched in the middle of the retina. The purpose of this study was to evaluate a more powerful adeno associated virus (AAV) vector for its ability to specifically target bipolar cells and restore useful vision to a mouse model of CSNB by providing an unmutated copy of the disease causing gene. This study represents the first demonstration of gene replacement therapy in a model of bipolar-cell mediated disease and has direct implications for development of an AAV based gene therapy to treat CSNB patients. (Flesh-Kincaid Grade Level: 20.9)

11914

FIELD STUDY OF THE USE OF ALUMINUM WATER TREATMENT RESIDUALS IN A PERMEABLE REACTIVE BARRIER SYSTEM TO REDUCE SOLUBLE PHOSPHORUS MOVEMENT IN GROUNDWATER

My research involved building a barrier in the ground the allowed groundwater laden with phosphorus to pass through it. The materials that we used within the barrier are water treatment residuals, the by products from a water treatment plant, and they have chemical properties that bind the phosphorus (P) within the barrier. This research took place at a dairy ranch near Lake Okeechobee in southern Florida. Run off from the dairy ranch is high in dissolved phosphorus and when it enters Lake Okeechobee it causes algae blooms. This research proved that water treatment residuals did remove P from groundwater as expected. (Flesh-Kincaid Grade Level: 10.3)

11896

Long-Term Motor Learning Improvements and Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation Post Stroke: A Meta-Analysis

Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) including anodal and cathodal stimulation is an attractive protocol for stroke motor recovery. Post stroke, unbalanced magnitude of cortical excitability between hemispheres (e.g., more affected hemisphere < less affected hemisphere) causes impaired paretic arm functions. Thus, both anodal stimulation upregulating cortical excitability in the more affected hemisphere and cathodal stimulation downregulating cortical excitability in the less affected hemisphere are known to improve motor functions at various stages of stroke recovery. Despite the presumed evidence that tDCS improves motor performance post stroke, whether the restored motor capabilities persist as permanent changes in behavior is unclear. The current systematic review and meta-analysis investigated the effects of tDCS on motor learning post stroke. Motor learning was defined as motor improvements from baseline to long-term retention. Nineteen studies that used long-term retention testing (retention interval: at least 5 days post intervention) qualified for the meta-analyses. Outcome measures included: (a) four motor function tests (i.e., Fugl-Meyer Assessment, Berg Balance Scale, National Institute of Health Stroke Scale, and modified Rankin Scale), (b) Purdue Peg Board Test, (c) Jebsen-Taylor Hand Function Test, and (d) motor skill acquisition. A fixed effects model meta-analysis showed a significant overall effect size: tDCS protocol significantly improves motor learning in stroke survivors. Specifically, moderator variable analyses revealed beneficial effects of tDCS on motor learning: (a) stimulation protocols: anodal on more affected hemisphere, cathodal on less affected hemisphere, and bilateral, (b) recovery stage: sub-acute and chronic stroke, and (c) stimulation intensity: 1 mA, 1 – 2 mA, and 2 mA. In conclusion, benefits of tDCS on motor learning increased for stimulation protocols including cathodal stimulation on the less affected hemisphere for both the sub-acute and chronic stages. (Flesh-Kincaid Grade Level: 17.3)

11887

“Neocyclotus Opercula, a Morphometric Analysis of Variation at the Archaic Site of San Jacinto1 Colombia”

Some snail species produce opercula, a calcified plate attached to the foot of these snails indispensable for their protection from predators, and lack of moisture. Opercula are rarely found in archaeological sites, and have only been recovered from few excavations. Archaeological studies at the site of San Jacinto, Colombia (5,940 BP to 5,190 BP) resulted in the recovery of 3,542 opercula a presence that has not been recorded previously in South America. These calcified plates are formed by layers, which stop their growth during yearly dry seasons, and are useful as markers for seasonality and their ancient use by humans. The variation of mineral elements from opercula samples is superior to that of shells as they have less natural variation, and preserve their components better as a result to the stability of calcite. The particular characteristics in opercula make these structures ideal for analysis of variations of mineral elements especially oxygen (δ18O) to identify seasonal variation. A random sample of the San Jacinto opercula was analyzed in order to determine spatial distribution, changes through time, size, and human use. Said analyses allow us to identify the opercula’s function at the site, and to determine the variation as well as the conservation of opercula samples for a future analysis as a way to determine climatic changes in Northern Colombia during the middle Holocene (6,000 years ago). (Flesh-Kincaid Grade Level: 18.2)

11875

Binge Eating Severity Improvement in Response to Dose of Behavioral Treatment for Obesity Binge eating is the consumption of what is perceived as a large amount of food during a certain period of time that results in a person feeling disgusted, shameful, or guilty. We looked at changes in binge eating severity from baseline (Month 0) to post-treatment (Month 6) in a sample of 572 obese adults in a behavioral weight management program. Behavioral weight management programs focus on improving nutrition, decreasing calorie consumption, and increasing physical activity by placing participants in groups of 12-15 women and men with a trained group leader to work on goal setting, self-monitoring, and problem solving. There were four treatment conditions that differed in the number of sessions participants received (High = 24 sessions, Moderate = 16 sessions, Low = 8 sessions, and Control = 8 sessions, but participants did not complete daily food records). We found that 34.8% of participants reported problems with binge eating. We also found that binge eating severity decreased across all treatment conditions, but that participants who received more sessions over the six-month period improved more. Although there were no differences in binge eating severity between treatment groups at baseline, there were significant differences at post-treatment: participants in the Moderate and High treatment conditions had significantly fewer symptoms of binge eating at post-treatment than those in the Control condition. We also found that participants in the Moderate and High treatment conditions had significantly greater reductions in binge eating severity over time than those in the Control condition. To our knowledge, this is the first study to look at the impact of various doses of behavioral treatment for obesity on improvements in participants’ binge eating severity. Our research highlights a valuable finding for interventionists regarding the importance of at least a Moderate dose of treatment in eliciting greater reductions in binge eating severity. (Flesh-Kincaid Grade Level: 17.1)

11870

Warrington College of Business Administration - Business Administration (Information Systems and Operations Management)

In this paper we analyze the competition between two firms

11865

Sea Turtle Friendly Lighting in Florida: Understanding the Policy Implementation and Enforcement Process

Artificial lighting can cause sea turtles to head in the wrong direction causing many turtles to be unable to find their way back to the ocean. To lower the effect of artificial light on sea turtles and their nesting habitat, 82 local governments in Florida have passed beach lighting laws. Many of these laws do not include strong enforcement language. For example, less than 10% require a lighting inspection during the nesting season. However, the way a local law is written may not reflect the activities actually occurring in that area. Code enforcement officers are responsible for the translation of sea turtle lighting ordinances into action. This study explores what activities are actually happening in Florida cities, highlights best practices and discusses suggestions for improvement. (Flesh-Kincaid Grade Level: 12)