College of Saint Benedict and Saint John's University
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A Quick Review of Statistical Thinking (4th Edition)
No full textA Quick Review of Statistical Thinking (4th Edition) is for those who need to become familiar with the content of a typical intro stats course prior to beginning an honors thesis or any research project, taking advanced statistics, reviewing for the MCAT, or starting graduate school. QRST covers effect sizes and confidence intervals for all tests typically covered in an undergraduate statistics course. SPSS also includes a very useful power analysis routine that is carefully explained in QRST.https://digitalcommons.csbsju.edu/psychology_books/1009/thumbnail.jp
Workshop on the Common Good
No full textIn this workshop, Kristin Heyer will discuss the common good tradition in Catholic social thought with special attention to its ‘growing edges’ and curricular implications. She will suggest several virtues and practices for pursing the common good in a Catholic university curriculum in this particular historical moment and in the face of perceived or real tensions with commitments to difference, diverse perspectives, structural power differentials, and injustices. Finally she will offer some questions for discussion to prompt participants’ reflection on connections to their own work personally (vocationally) and more broadly (collectively as a CSB/SJU community).
Dr. Heyer is a professor of theological ethics and the director of graduate studies in the theology department at Boston College
A Homily on Romans 10:14-15
Get PDFIn my studies within the course of Technology in Ministry, I was encouraged to use and promote the use of technology as a valuable means to proclaim the Good News to people where they are. In the “spirit” of Vatican II, the Church reaches out to her sons and daughters, especially the young, in an effort to make practical use of technology. Social media specifically comes into question when considering the use of high-tech communication to proclaim the Word. If we hold that the beauty of the feet of those who bring good news to the world from village to village is always a matter of significant value through the ages, how about the beauty of the hands and eyes of those who proclaim the Gospel of God through the use of this now ubiquitous technology? Can we indeed go so far as to state that the internet might be a divine gift, a means by which evangelization is made somehow more efficient and effective in the modern world
The Generation of the Smartphone
Get PDFiGen is the generation of those born after 1995. A common characteristic of teen iGen’ers is their lack of interest in school. Many of these kids attend school only because they must, not because school is a place where they are looking forward going each morning. The low interested has been increasing since 2012.. There is a link between iGen teens’ behavior including motivation to go to school to their use of technologies around them. In this paper, the author tries to find a response to this change and to offer some hope to those working with teens
An Exegesis Paper on the Hanging of the King of Ai
Get PDFThis paper analyzes Joshua 8 on the Hanging of the King of Ai. By utilizing contemporary biblical scholarship, this paper attempts to highlight elements of Ancient Near Eastern crucifixion and torture practices to shed new light on Jesus’ own crucifixion
SARS-CoV-2 Main Protease Inhibitors Repurposed for HIV-1 Protease Binding
Get PDFSevere acute respiratory syndrome (SARS-CoV-2) led to the COVID-19 global pandemic, with over 460 million cases of infection and over 6 million deaths since the start of the pandemic. SARS-CoV-2 is a retrovirus that utilizes a main protease (Mpro). Mpro is a catalytic cys/his protease. Several treatments were proposed to stop the pandemic including repurposing drugs to inhibit the Mpro. Another retrovirus that uses a protease is human immunodeficiency virus (HIV-1) which has been a global epidemic for 40 years and is a devastating disease that attacks the immune system. HIV-1 has infected 79.5 million people and has killed an estimated 36 million people since the start of the epidemic in 1981 and is still prevalent today. HIV-1 retrovirus utilizes the host cell’s machinery to transcribe viral RNA and translate gag-pol protein. HIV-1 protease is a dual asp protease used to cleave this gag-pol protein, thereby activating the protein, allowing for viral replication and infection of other cells. HIV-1 pr can sporadically mutate into drug resistant strains which resist the common therapies used to inhibit HIV-1 pr. An approach to combat this issue is to create treatments made specifically for these drug resistant strains. In one strain, multidrug resistance is caused in the multidrug resistant hexamutant of HIV-1 pr (HIV-1 pr MDR-HM) with six amino acid mutations: (L10I/M46I/I54V/V82A/I84V/L90M). The focus of this research is to investigate whether SARS-CoV-2 Mpro and HIV-1 pr have a similar enough mechanism that SARS-CoV-2 Mpro inhibitors will also bind to both HIV-1 protease wild type (wt) and MDR-HM. Three repurposed SARS-CoV-2 inhibitors: carmofur, leupeptin, and rosuvastatin were chosen to see if they could be repurposed for HIV-1 protease due to their affordability and computational binding affinity to HIV-1 pr. Initially, computational analysis was utilized to acquire binding information of the repurposed SARS-CoV-2 inhibitors on HIV-1 protease. POCASA (Pocket Cavity Search Algorithm) was used to predict the main binding pockets of HIV-1 protease. Swissdock identified the center of the HIV-1 protease homodimer being the most prevalent binding pocket. Analysis of this pocket showed thermodynamically favorable binding to leupeptin, carmofur, and rosuvastatin. Since computational analysis showed promising prevalence for the inhibitors, the next step was to test these in vitro. A plasmid containing HIV-1 protease was transformed into E. coli BL21(DE3) cells. HIV-1 protease was purified from E. Coli cells and used in a fluorescent binding assay to derive binding affinity of rosuvastatin to HIV-1 pr wt (Kd=32.3 ± 3.5 μM) and MDR-HM (Kd=73.7 ± 15.8 μM), as well as carmofur to HIV-1 pr wt (Kd= 0.35 ± 0.01 mM) and MDR-HM (Kd=0.31 ± 0.04 mM)
Differences in Gastrointestinal Symptoms, Stress, and Lifestyle Factors in Adults With and Without Irritable Bowel Syndrome After Consumption of Gluten and Inulin
Get PDFBackground: Gluten and inulin type fibers have been shown to impact satiety, breath hydrogen, GI symptoms, and properties of different food products. Stress is often thought to play a role in breath hydrogen and gastrointestinal symptoms. Additional lifestyle factors are often related to increased GI symptoms including fiber consumption, increased high-intensity exercise, higher rates of anxiety, and disrupted sleep behaviors. Furthermore, individuals with irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) often display differences in GI symptoms based on consumption of gluten and inulin and lifestyle factors.
Objective: The objective of this panel will be to describe the findings from a year-long study examining the impact of consumption of gluten and inulin (a FODMAP) on gastrointestinal (GI) symptoms, breath hydrogen, satiety, perceived stress, cortisol levels, and a variety of lifestyle factors including anxiety, diet, physical activity, and sleep in adults with and without IBS.
Methods: A blinded, randomized, controlled crossover design was conducted with 24 non-IBS participants. Fasted participants consumed a control low FODMAP smoothie and treatment smoothies that consisted of the low FODMAP base (control) with gluten (5g) or inulin (5g). Cortisol and breath hydrogen were measured at baseline (0), 1, 2, and 3 hours. GI symptoms were measured at baseline (0), 0.5, 1, 1.5, 2, 3, 12, and 24 hours. VAS was collected at baseline (0), 10 min, 30 min, 1, 1.5, 2, and 3 hours. Perceived stress, State and Trait Anxiety, and Physical activity were measured for each treatment. Dietary intake and Sleep were analyzed at one time point as these measures assessed behaviors over the past 30 days. Salimetrics ELISA assays were used to determine cortisol values. Variables were analyzed by the Area Under the Curve using the trapezoidal rule, Spearman rho correlation coefficients, Independent T-tests, Repeated Measures ANOVA, and Simple-Effects Tests with significance set at p\u3c.05.
Results: There were no differences between non-IBS and IBS groups in any diet variable, including fruits, vegetables, fiber, dairy, added sugar, whole grains, physical activity variables, or sleep (p\u3e0.05). There were no differences in state-somatic, trait-somatic, trait-cognitive, or trait-total in either treatment for non-IBS and IBS groups (p\u3e0.05), except for the inulin treatment had a difference in state-cognitive between non-IBS and IBS groups (MD=3.5714; p=0.035) with the IBS group having more state-cognitive anxiety. The IBS group had more total GI symptoms to begin with (p=.001), however, there were no differences in change in breath hydrogen between treatments or groups (p\u3e0.05). More details will be provided during the panel discussion.
Conclusion: In this sample of participants, the restriction of gluten and inulin in the diet (at 5 grams) is not warranted for those with and without IBS, as neither treatment produced a significant increase in breath hydrogen or GI symptoms for either group. In those with IBS, there were increased GI symptoms to start with, indicating more GI distress but not related to the consumption of gluten or inulin at the 5-gram level
Protein Engineering of a Spectroscopic Probe into Malate Dehydrogenase (MDH)
Get PDFMalate dehydrogenase (MDH) is an enzyme that has a key role in biological processes, like the Krebs cycle. Specifically, it reversibly catalyzes the interconversion of (S)-malate with NAD+ to oxaloacetate and NADH. Once oxaloacetate is synthesized, MDH dispatches it to citrate synthase, but it is not clear how this happens. One theory is that MDH channels it to citrate synthase by forming a metabolon, a mechanism for direct channeling, preventing diffusion of reaction intermediates into a bulk matrix. There is a lack of research in this area due to the absence of a spectroscopic probe necessary to visualize MDH’s conformational changes. Therefore, a method was tested to incorporate a fluorescent landmark into MDH’s structure and thus be used in future research to reveal the interactions between MDH and citrate synthase. Specific amino acids of MDH were mutated to tryptophan, an amino acid known to fluoresce (V189, I319, A120, I136, P119, G218). The coding sequence for the wildtype MDH and mutant MDHs were incorporated into plasmids and bacterially transformed into Escherichia coli. Both wildtype and mutant proteins were over-expressed, then purified by nickel affinity chromatography using a hexahistidine tag on the N-terminus of MDH. Data will demonstrate that I139W, V189W, and A120W had significantly lower activity than wildtype MDH, and the same is predicted for I136W. I139W and V189W emitted fluorescence at 290 nm, but I136W did not. The mutations P119W and G218W could not be overexpressed or purified. Next steps in design of a fluorescent, active MDH will be discussed
Inclusion/Radical Hospitality Mural
No full textIn fall 2021, students enrolled in LLAS 270 with professor Bruce Campbell (Latino/Latin American Studies) undertook a mural design process in collaboration with the Multicultural Center, with the goal of creating a mural on the theme of Inclusion/Radical Hospitality. Students attended events in the LLAS events series on the related theme of Race and Climate Change, learned about community-based mural art, toured community murals in south Minneapolis, and developed strategies for engaging the broader CSB/SJU community in conversations about how to create and sustain inclusive community. Student teams conducted online surveys, interviewed students and staff at the Multicultural Center, and organized a participatory public art event as part of a climate action gala on campus.
At the end of the semester, students gathered their community inputs (survey and interview responses, and community-sourced images) and brainstormed ideas for a mural design based on community feedback. The result was a two-part concept, put into practice in spring 2022:
•First, student artists – supervised by faculty members Bruce Campbell (LLAS) and Rachel Melis (Art) – would design and paint five trompe l\u27oeil windows, each one opening onto an imagined dimension of a radically inclusive shared world. (From left to right: sunflower and the bonds of friendship; Mother Nature as common home; open mind and community; justice as equal growth and development for all; and the world as collective gift.)
•Second, the broader CSB/SJU community would be invited to graffiti and doodle the wall space around the artist-rendered windows, crowd-sourcing that part of the mural in response to a prompt about how to envision and practice inclusion.
Window in the photo was designed and painted depicting Mother Nature
