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Whisker growth dynamics of walrus under human care
No full textWildlife species that live in remote habitats often require significant investment for scientific study. As such, in lieu of direct observation, conservation research often relies on the analysis of biological samples that are easier to access (feces, hair, whiskers) to gain insight into a wild species' life history (Crawford et al., 2008). Using these samples, scientists can explore exposure to toxic elements, stress, foraging behavior, and even spatial habitat use without undue stress to the animal itself (Crawford et al., 2008). Whiskers (also known as vibrissae), and other keratinized tissues, can be analyzed via isotopic analysis for their content of elements, hormones, and isotopes that remain stable over time. These analyses provide longitudinal insight into an animal's stress, exposure to pollutants, diet, foraging habits, habitat use, and health that can be essential for wildlife managers and scientists alike (Ceia et al., 2018; Charapata et al., 2022; Crawford et al., 2008; Jones et al., 2020; Keogh et al., 2021; Kooyomjian et al., 2022). Whiskers can be obtained from both living and dead animals through minimally invasive sampling efforts, making them an ideal tool for tracking long-term biological processes and ecological effects on individuals
Benthic invertebrate counts from Ship Shoal, Louisiana 2020-2022
No full textDataset is counts of benthic invertebrates in .xlsx spreadsheets. Can be opened with Microsoft Excel or imported into common statistical programs such as R.The overall goal of this project is to determine the changes in biological function of Ship Shoal in response to excavation of sand. To achieve this goal this study used a multidisciplinary approach that combined measurements of the changing physical setting of the shoal with potential changes in water column and benthic primary production, benthic faunal community and associated nekton, and stable isotope tracers to delineate changes in the shoal food web. The data included here are the raw counts of benthic invertebrates (animals collected on 1mm and 0.5 mm sieves).
NOTE: There are two dregde areas (i.e., pits).
The Caminada pit is older and deeper. It was last dredged prior to our sampling (2013-2016) so we have no pre-dredge samples in our dataset for Caminada.
The Terrebone pit (previously called Timbalier). It was dredged from Spring 2021 - Summer 2022. We consider the start of the dredging in March as 'post-dredging' as we sampled only in dredged areas.
Reference areas are undredged.
Location
Ship Shoal, Louisiana
Bounding box:
29°N, -90.8°W; 29°N, -90.5°W
28.8°N, -90.8°W; 28.8°N, -90.5°W
Methods
Samples were collected from Ship Shoal, a large transgressive sand shoal located approximately 10 miles off the central coast of Louisiana. Sampling was focused on three regions: the Caminada borrow pit (Caminada), the Terrebonne borrow pit (aka Timbalier), and a control area two km west of the Terrebonne pit (n=9 cores per region/sampling period). At each site sediment were collected using a GOMEX box corer (30cm x 30cm) and fixed and preserved in 5% buffered formalin and returned to the laboratory. After 48 hours, box core samples were sieved on a 1 mm sieve stacked on a 0.5 mm sieve using seawater. Formalin was replaced with 70% ethanol after 48 hours. Benthic organisms were picked and identified to the lowest possible taxon.
NOTE: Animal data are reported per core. To scale up to m2, multiply by 11.11. NA=Data not available. NA in Date column indicate samples not collected due to rough seas or lost in transit.Funding were provided by the U.S. Department of the Interior, Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM), Environmental Studies Program, Washington, DC, under Agreement Number M19AC00015
Character Theoretic Techniques for Nonabelian partial Difference Sets
No full textA(v,k,λ,µ)-partial difference set (PDS) is a subset D of size k of a group G of order v such that every nonidentity element g of G can be expressed in either λ or µ different ways as a product xy−1, x,y ∈ D, depending on whether or not g is in D. If D is inverse closed and 1 / ∈ D, then the Cayley graph Cay(G,D) is a (v,k,λ,µ)-strongly regular graph (SRG). PDSs have been studied extensively over the years, especially in abelian groups, where techniques from character theory have proven to be particularly effective. Recently, there has been considerable interest in studying PDSs in nonabelian groups, and the purpose of this thesis is to develop character theoretic techniques that apply in the nonabelian setting. We prove that analogues of character theoretic results of Ott [25] about generalized quadrangles of order s also hold in the general PDS setting. In conjunction with Ott’s results, we further develop character theoretic techniques to compute the intersection of a PDS with the conjugacy classes of the parent group. With these techniques, we are able to prove the nonexistence of PDSs in numerous instances. Furthermore, we are able to use these techniques constructively, computing several examples of PDSs in nonabelian groups not previously recognized in the literature, including an infinite family of genuinely nonabelian PDSs associated to the block-regular Steiner 2-designs first studied by WilsonMathematicsBachelors of Science (BS
To Terrify and Comfort: Poetic Social Responsibility in The Dream Songs
No full textThis thesis explores The Dream Songs by John Berryman as a deeply self-conscious and social poetic work. While often dismissed as opaque, erratic, and offensive—due in part to its use of minstrelsy, dream logic, and a volatile narrator—The Dream Songs emerges through close analysis as a literary project informed by personal trauma, cultural commentary, and a theatrical, multi-voiced structure. Through their main character Henry, Berryman constructs a dreamlike performance space in which private grief and public history—particularly American racial and literary legacies—collide and converse. This thesis draws on Edmund Wilson’s “The Wound and the Bow” to situate Berryman and his alter ego Henry as wounded artists, whose wounded selves reflect a wounded society. It also reconsiders Berryman’s “Homage to Mistress Bradstreet” as a technical and thematic precursor to the Songs, particularly in its experimentations with ventriloquism and identity. Finally, the thesis examines Berryman’s controversial use of blackface and minority voices, arguing that while ethically fraught, these choices underscore the text’s central concern with voice, otherness, and trauma. Rather than treating the Songs as completely incoherent and solipsistic, this thesis approaches them as the product of both a personal and societal imagination.EnglishBachelors of Arts (BA
Histograms on the Half-Shell
No full textGrade Level: 7th Grade Life Science, 7th Grade Mathematics.
VIMS and the Virginia Marine Resource Commission (VMRC) conduct yearly surveys to measure the size and abundance of the oyster population in Virginia’s Chesapeake Bay. This data can be used to infer how oysters respond to climate change, but it all starts with sampling oysters, measuring their size, and visualizing the size data. In this lesson, students will learn about survey design and graphing numerical data using histograms by copying the Virginia Oyster Stock Assessment surveys.
Focus: Learn about survey design and graphing histograms by copying the Virginia Oyster Stock Assessment survey
Cultivating a Network of Shellfish Aquaculture Research Farms Across the United States
No full textArcGIS StoryMap, Shellfish Aquaculture Research Farms in the United States: https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/bf26bdc5093f44c2be95d9fe7080e957 Data Access: https://figshare.com/articles/dataset/Research_Farm_Network_DataBase/28861634?file= 53966663Based on the model of federally supported agricultural experimental stations, a number of universities have established shellfish aquaculture research farms through various means of support. Like terrestrial agriculture, these shellfish aquaculture research farms would benefit from increased coordination and communication. There is currently no compilation of research capacity or official means of communication. This project 1) assessed the current capacity and breadth of shellfish aquaculture research farms, and 2) aims to establish a national network of those farms to improve collaboration and communication. This framework allows for expansion beyond the project's initial scope and suggests actionable steps going forward.Virginia Institute of Marine ScienceMaster of Arts (M.A.
Pressure Broadening in an Alkali-Metal Vapor in the Presence of a High Pressure Buffer Gas
No full textThe following thesis focuses on finding the linewidth for the pressure broadening curve of rubidium and using that to quantify the density of nitrogen or helium-3 that is in a sealed glass cell. The pressure broadening curve was found by using a laser to take measurements near the optical transitions of rubidium. These measurements are taken with the cell under different conditions (such as temperature and laser power) in order to find the actual linewidth of the alkali. This linewidth can then be used to quantify the helium density in the cell. This is done with the goal of decreasing experimental uncertainty when using helium-3 in experiments for nuclear physics research.PhysicsBachelors of Science (BS
A Model Archive for Estuarine exchange flow in the Albemarle-Pamlico Estuarine System
No full textDataset associated with Yin, D., Harris, C. K., & Warner, J. C. (2025). Estuarine exchange flow in the Albemarle‐Pamlico estuarine system. Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans, 130(8), e2024JC021919.
These files are compressed versions of input files, model code, and output used for the associated manuscript (Yin et al., 2025). Many of the input and output files use the NetCDF (Network Common Data Form) file format. These have "nc" as a file extension and can be read using a variety of open-source tools: see http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/software/netcdf/docs/. For information about the Regional Ocean Modeling System (ROMS), see www.myroms.org. For information about the Coupled-Ocean-Atmosphere-Wave-Sediment Transport Modeling System (COAWST), see https://github.com/DOI-USGS/COAWST.This dataset includes model input, code, and output used in the manuscript published at JGR-Oceans (Yin et al., 2025). In this work, the authors used a numerical model to understand the mechanisms behind the estuarine exchange flow of the Albemarle-Pamlico Estuarine System.
The Albemarle-Pamlico Estuarine System is located on the northeast coast of North Carolina, U.S.
Associated Publications:
Yin, D., Harris, C.K. & Warner, J.C. (2025).Estuarine exchange flow in the Albemarle-Pamlico Estuarine System. Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans. (In Press).Funding for this research was provided by National Science Foundation Coastlines and People Hubs for Research and Broadening Participation (CoPe) (Grant No. 2052889) and by sponsors of W&M’s high performance computing facilities
Treatment of Clonidine Based Attentional Deficits by Intranasal Orexin A Administration
No full textClonidine, an alpha-2 receptor agonist of the adrenergic system, has not been thoroughly examined regarding its attentional impact on healthy rats. The limited number of studies, however, have shown that clonidine impairs attentional ability (Bushnell et al., 1997). Furthermore, no significant steps have been taken to investigate the orexinergic system’s ability to attenuate attentional deficits caused by clonidine’s noradrenergic disruption although there is evidence to demonstrate orexinergic neurons can provide excitation to inhibited noradrenergic neurons (Hagan et al., 1999). This leads to the question: are the attentional deficits caused by the disruption of noradrenergic neurons with intraperitoneal administered clonidine reversible with the utility of intranasal orexin A? Sprague-Dawley rats (n = 11) were trained in a visual sustained attention task and received vehicle-only, clonidine-only, or orexin A and clonidine. The experimental results demonstrated that clonidine did create significant attentional impairments, as shown with decreased performance at the 500 ms signal duration and increased number of omissions. However, there were no significant decreases to non-signal trial accuracy. In terms of orexin A’s therapeutic potential, there was no significant ability to reverse the attentional deficits. The attentional impairments created by clonidine were transient, as there was no significant difference in attentional performance between drug administration and non-drug administration days. In conclusion, clonidine was able to create transient attentional deficits, and orexin A was unable to treat these attentional deficits.NeuroscienceBachelors of Science (BS