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John Bickham field notebook: AK18501-AK19000.pdf
No full textBound book, each page corresponds to a karyotype slide data.Data pages for AK19001-AK19500 corresponding to unique identifiers of specimens/samples examined for biological research. Specimens are primarily housed at Texas A&M University; Biodiverstiy Research and Teaching Collection
Improving the Sensitivity of the Search for New Resonances in the X->HH->bbWW Channel at the LHC with the CMS Detector
No full textThe Standard Model (SM) of particle physics successfully describes fundamental particles and three out of four fundamental interactions. However, it fails to incorporate the fourth fundamental interaction, gravity, and cannot explain observed phenomena like matter-antimatter asymmetry. These limitations suggest new physics beyond the SM, possibly probed via Higgs boson pair (HH) production at the CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC). This dissertation presents the results of a search for new heavy resonances (denoted as ���X���) with spin-0 and spin-2 decaying into HH at the LHC in the bbW+W��� channel, specifically: X ��� HH ��� bbW+W��� ��� bbl+��l�����. It uses 137.6 fb���1 proton���proton collision data at a center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV recorded by the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) detector from 2016 to 2018. The presence of two escaping neutrinos in the final state leads to an unconstrained kinematic system, making direct reconstruction of the heavy resonance mass impossible. To address this challenge, the search employs a new technique, called the Heavy Mass Estimator (HME), which estimates the heavy resonance mass in a probabilistic approach. Additionally, compared to an earlier CMS search using only 2016 data, this search extends event selection criteria to enhance signal acceptance and adopts an advanced machine learning architecture. These two enhancements alongside the HME technique significantly increase sensitivity, achieving 2 to 5 times greater sensitivity compared to the 2016 search, assuming the same amount of data. No statistically significant evidence for new heavy resonances is found within the data. Upper limits at a 95% confidence level are set on the production cross sections of new resonances decaying into HH. These limits vary from 7.149 pb to 0.030 pb for spin-0 resonances and from 5.569 pb to 0.023 pb for spin-2 resonances, in the mass range from 250 GeV to 900 GeV
University Faculty Perceptions About Disability, Accommodations, and Access
No full textOpportunities and expectations for students with disabilities to earn a postsecondary degree have grown over recent decades. Despite positive improvements, disabled students lag behind non-disabled peers in degree attainment. Simultaneously, growing numbers of disabled students are enrolling with increasingly complex experiences, including a significant growth in mental health conditions among college students, and institutions of higher education are struggling to respond.
Faculty and staff in higher education have noticed these trends, but have done little more than keep up with increasing demands. Though prior researchers have long focused on the experiences of students, considerably less effort has been put into understanding the experience of faculty or staff involved in creating disability access. Faculty experiences are essential to understand because of their critical role in disability access.
Prior research on faculty experiences teaching disabled college students has largely featured survey-based, quantitative designs that have provided valuable aggregated insights, but offer little context of their faculty participants or the factors behind their responses. The purpose of this study was to qualitatively assess faculty experiences and perceptions of teaching students with disabilities. Faculty participants with at least five years of experience were recruited from a single, culturally bound university.
This study yielded data that add new insights to the literature, and implications for practice. The findings identified faculty hold strong, paradoxical views about bureaucratic systems that shape how disability access occurs in a university setting. Specifically, they have a dynamic and interactive relationship with the systems at hand, which are modified through relationships and trust of those involved. Faculty were generally supportive and positive of disabled students and disability resource staff, while simultaneously questioning and fearing the bureaucratic system deployed to ensure disability access. This study situated participant perspectives relative to their experiences navigating institutional systems, and therefore adds factors related to bureaucracy and trust to the literature, while also confirming a variety of prior researcher���s findings. While this study contributes new insights to the literature and best practices, further research is needed to ensure faculty are adequately prepared and supported when teaching disabled students
Ira Greenbaum field notebook: GK1001-GK1500.pdf
No full textBound book, each page corresponds to a karyotype slide data.Data pages for GK1001-GK1500 corresponding to unique identifiers of specimens/samples examined for biological research. Specimens are primarily housed at Texas A&M University; Biodiverstiy Research and Teaching Collection
Integrated Fracture Propagation, Fluid Flow and Geomechanics Modeling for Sealed Wellbore Pressure Analysis
No full textOffset well pressure monitoring is a useful fracture diagnostic tool for detecting pressure changes due to far-field fracture propagation. Recently, sealed wellbore pressure analysis has emerged as a low-cost diagnostic tool for fracture hit detection in unconventional development. The surface pressure gauge is installed in the offset monitor well to monitor pressure changes as hydraulic fractures propagate and intersect the wellbore. A monitor well, in this context, refers to a strategically located observation well situated near the hydraulic fracturing treatment well. It is sealed to ensure a closed system, meaning there are no perforations connected to the formation, thereby preventing fluid flow into or out of the wellbore. Inside the wellbore it is filled with a low compressibility fluid. To extend the understanding of sealed casing response, a methodology of using integrated numerical model to simulate sealed wellbore pressure is established. The objective is to investigate the strain/pressure response along the sealed wellbore under different circumstances of fracture intersection.
In this study, a workflow was presented to model fracture propagation, and estimate resulting far-field strain and pressure changes in the sealed wellbore. The integrated numerical model consists of a commercially available fracture propagation model, a three-dimensional geomechanics model, and a transient fluid flow model. Fracture propagation model is used to simulate fracture geometry and fracture net pressure. The finite element-based fluid flow model and geomechanics model of fractured rock and sealed casing were established for pressure, stress/strain modeling and solve the linear elastic stress-strain-displacement behavior within the simulation domain. Adopting this integrated approach, the internal volume change of the wellbore, and the corresponding surface pressure change can be evaluated to aid in understanding sealed wellbore pressure behavior and far-field fracture interaction.
This study includes various applications of the developed methodology. A field-scale case study and numerical investigation were conducted to interpret field-measured pressure responses during hydraulic fracturing. The model was also applied to simulate strain responses observed in a laboratory fracture experiment with embedded fiber optic cables. The comparison between simulated and measured strains validated the accuracy of the model. Finally, completion parameters were evaluated by analyzing offset wellbore pressure data. This evaluation included comparing the estimated injected volume when the fracture first intersects the offset wellbore and the magnitude of pressure response with various completion parameters such as number of clusters, cluster spacing, injection rate, and injected fluid loading. This evaluation shows the importance of optimizing completion design to enhance fracture stimulation performance
Generational Ethnography in Post-1974 Cyprus: Island Narratives and Shifting (Im)Mobility Through Nation-Making, Belonging, Identity, and Border Realities
No full textThe 1974 conflict and the troubles of the 1960s in Cyprus hold a unique position from an anthropological forced migration studies perspective. The Coup D���etat and the following Turkish intervention in 1974 was the tipping point of the inter-ethnic conflict in Cyprus, which led to thousands of Cypriots becoming refugees through the division of the island. Through extended interviews, this study looks at both Greek and Turkish Cypriot perceptions of the events before the 1974 conflict and the 1974 conflict, casting light on forced migration within the conflict. This study discusses how forced migration and ethnic cleansing divided the once-intermixed ethnic community. Additionally, this study looks at the transgenerational understanding of the ethnic, political, and geographical national divide of Cyprus through the dispersed communities. An understanding of the complex structure of the Cypriots from this study hopes to expedite the solutions to the issues of the current climate of the island
The Effects of Culturally Tailored Agricultural Literacy Curriculum Among Latino Youth Behavior
No full textAgriculture and nutrition are tightly intertwined as each relies heavily on the other to support the Nation���s food system and the consumers it feeds. Unfortunately, the urbanization of our communities has triggered a divide between farmers and their consumers. This is made evident by the general population lacking an inadequate level of agricultural literacy. Partnered with this decline, an insidious health problem, childhood obesity, has increased in America���s youth. It is important to recognize that there is a higher prevalence of this health disparity among the Hispanic population. Through the lens of the social cognitive theory, the researchers aimed to assess the impact of culturally relevant agricultural literacy lessons have on Latino youths��� agricultural literacy levels and nutrition attitudes and behavior scores. The objectives of this study were achieved by implementing two interventions, the comparison and treatment, to youth after-school and summer programs located in Central and South Texas. The comparison group received the standardized agricultural literacy curriculum from the National Agricultural Literacy Matrix. The treatment group received the culturally tailored version of the curriculum. The pre and posttest data were analyzed by t-tests and repeated measures ANOVA. Regardless of intervention, the agricultural literacy levels of youth increased from pre to posttest which provides researchers with evidence of the positive impact of youth engaging with nutrition based, agricultural literacy curriculum. The youth who engaged with the culturally relevant agricultural literacy curriculum had a positive gain in their nutrition attitudes and behavior scores. Conversely, the comparison group did not have significant change in their nutrition scores. The novelty of this research provides valuable insight to scholars in the agricultural literacy field as it underscores the importance of providing a space for youth to connect their cultural background and experiences while interacting with lessons that highlight the relationship of the agricultural industry and nutrition
Allocation of Peptidoglycan Resources Between the Rod System and Class-A Penicillin-Binding Proteins in Myxococcus xanthus
No full textPeptidoglycan (PG) is a polymer scaffolding surrounding the cell membrane of bacteria and is key to survival as it aids in preserving cell structure and protects against harmful stresses. It is composed of alternating N-acetylglucosamine and N-acetylmuramic acid strands that are crosslinked through peptide chains. The synthesis of PG is a highly dynamic and tightly regulated process, spanning across the cytoplasm, inner membrane, and periplasm in gram-negative bacteria. PG synthesis is vital for cell survival and remodeling of the sacculus is required during cell elongation and division as well as during PG repair. PG synthesis has been heavily studied, however, it is still unknown how the allocation of PG precursors are portioned between the two PG synthase systems of the class-A penicillin-binding proteins and the Rod system. Here we take advantage of the monomer-dimer characteristic of the phospho-MurNAc-pentapeptide translocase protein, MraY, as a proxy for PG precursor usage of PG synthases. Using single particle tracking photoactivatable localization microscopy, we show that the Rod system is the main synthase system active in vegetative growth while aPBP���s are responsible for PG repair. This study aims to further understand the properties of PG synthesis and how the cell divides its resources during vegetative growth and repair
John Bickham field notebook: AK-SpecimenSheets_AK1-AK9832_assorted.pdf
No full textEach page/AK number corresponds to a karyotype slide data and/or unique specimen.Data pages for AK-SpecimenSheets_AK1-AK9832_assorted corresponding to unique identifiers of specimens/samples examined for biological research. Specimens are primarily housed at Texas A&M University; Biodiverstiy Research and Teaching Collection
Advancements in Cattle Nutrition and Health: From Antimicrobial Strategies to Environmental Sustainability and Innovative Pedagogy
No full textThree experiments were conducted to evaluate 1) the interrelationship between virginiamycin (VM) inclusion, ruminal pH dynamics, and hepatic blood metabolites to determine optimal supplementation phases; 2) the additive effects of condensed tannins (CT) and active dry yeast (ADY) on digestibility and fermentation dynamics; and 3) writing and visual models as a pedagogical strategy for creating individual learning paths in animal nutrition. In the first study, 120 growing steers (304 �� 27 kg) were fed for 150 d to evaluate the strategic administration of VM at 240 mg/d. We concluded that VM supplementation during the whole feeding phase tended to decrease the time spent under pH 5.8 (P = 0.081), thus improving rumen buffering capacity and reducing acidotic events. Additionally, VM inclusion lessened the acute phase protein response during the transition between the grower and finisher diet. In the second study, 23 ruminally cannulated steers (284.3 �� 4.1 kg) were utilized in a factorial design to evaluate the supplementation of ADY at 10 g/d, CT at 1 % DM of quebracho extract (0.78% total CT and 0.312% PPP on DM basis), and combined CT and ADY (CTY; 1% DM and 10 g/d, respectively). In vitro methane production was affected in a quadratic fashion (P = 0.001) as days progressed, with CTY being less relative to CON, CT and ADY (8.14 vs. 14.69 mM, respectively). The inclusion of ADY and CT did not affect ruminal variables (total VFA, protozoa, pH and redox; P ��� 0.05). However, apparent total tract DM digestibility (aDMD) and neutral detergent fiber digestibility (aNDFD) for CTY (60.08% and 51.78%, respectively) were intermediate of ADY and CT supplementation, aligning with our intended outcome of combining them. In the third study, students (n = 27) who participated in the honors contract of an upper-level animal nutrition course were asked to participate in a self-directed learning project. Likert scale surveys (88.8% response rate) and reflections reported that writing to learn gave them an authentic scientific writing experience that when paired with the creation of visual models improved their confidence and ability to interpret and integrate concepts from lecture and outside sources