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Methodology for Characterizing Bilateral Coordination Impairments Across Different Task Demands in Children with Cerebral Palsy
No full textFaculty Advisor: Dr. Rachel HaweThis research was supported by the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP).McPhee, Megan; Hawe, Rachel. (2025). Methodology for Characterizing Bilateral Coordination Impairments Across Different Task Demands in Children with Cerebral Palsy. Retrieved from the University Digital Conservancy, https://hdl.handle.net/11299/276326
Episode 07 - Season 2 trailer, Library Table Talk
No full text4:02 minutes runtime. For more information, please visit the Library Table Talk website at z.umn.edu/LibraryTableTalkIn which we share the upcoming epsiodes for the second season of Library Table Talk. We also discuss the Call for Proposals to guest host. We invite folks to apply to be a guest host during a Spring 2026 epsiode of Library Table Talk. Visit our website to apply and pitch your own episode topic, format, and guests.Sparrow, Stephanie; Cabullo, Hannah. (2025). Episode 07 - Season 2 trailer, Library Table Talk. Retrieved from the University Digital Conservancy, https://hdl.handle.net/11299/274623
Breaking Ground: How Tillage Impacts Soil, Yields & Costs
No full textTillage is used for seedbed preparation, residue management, and fertilizer incorporation but it often harms soil health when overused. Intensive tillage increases erosion, compaction, and organic matter loss, while also raising fuel and equipment costs. Research shows reduced tillage systems (e.g., strip till, vertical till) maintain yields and lower expenses. Selecting appropriate tillage implements should be based on soil, crop, and erosion risk to support sustainable, cost-effective farming.DeJong-Hughes, Jodi; Daigh, Aaron. (2025). Breaking Ground: How Tillage Impacts Soil, Yields & Costs. Retrieved from the University Digital Conservancy, https://hdl.handle.net/11299/274472
Minutes: Senate Committee on Finance and Planning (SCFP): May 13, 2025
No full textIn these minutes: Annual Workforce & Human Resources Strategy Report; PEAK Implementation Update; Sustainability Update; Legislative Update; Committee Busines
Data driven protein scaffold developability engineering
No full textUniversity of Minnesota Ph.D. dissertation. May 2025. Major: Chemical Engineering. Advisor: Benjamin Hackel. 1 computer file (PDF); x, 147 pages.For a protein to constitute a compelling industrial or therapeutic candidate, it must be both functional and able to weather the vicissitudes of time and handling to maintain said function. This latter attribute alludes to a protein’s developability profile: the protease stability, thermal stability, flexibility, recombinant yield, and related properties of a protein that enable enaction of its key function of interest, be it enzymatic degradation of deleterious chemical compounds in an industrial context or flagging an overexpressed cancer-linked immune checkpoint inhibitor for adaptive immune system-mediated elimination in a therapeutic one. Despite protein developability’s importance in classical protein discovery pipelines, the vast ruggedness and sparsity of the underlying sequence-function and sequence-developability landscape significantly impedes identification of lead variants. High throughput developability proxy metrics on deep mutational scanning protein datasets partially alleviate this issue: rigorous data-driven techniques must rise to the challenge of utilizing such exponentially growing datasets to guide successive lead developability hit discovery efforts. The following research is focused on both retrospective and prospective data-driven prediction of small protein scaffold developability across three protein scaffolds and several novel high-throughput proxy and low-throughput gold standard developability assays. The first story sought to develop a model capable of first mapping 104 Gp2 scaffold paratope sequences to a set of three high-throughput assays to first guide construction of a sequence-developability latent space representation via an integrated embedding and top model approach. Then, we trained a separate top model in a transfer-learning paradigm to map these variants’ learned developability representations to a low-throughput gold standard developability metric, bacterial recombinant yield. This deep learning approach outperformed all assessed benchmarks and controls on both the retrospective assay and recombinant yield tasks on a held-out independent test set. Interpretability of this model revealed the importances of amino acidcharge, size, and cysteine identity to inform Gp2 developability. Prospective analysis via application of Monte Carlo sampling in conjunction with variant discriminative scoring using our model against controls resulted in recombinant yield enhancement relative to both said controls and the original naïve library. The second story adapts the approach outlined in the first to perform sequence-high throughput developability proxy assay-low throughput gold standard developability assay metric mapping for two additional small scaffold protein candidate molecules: affibody and fibronectin. The overlap of observed affibody and fibronectin variant hits across the evaluated assays was sparse due to large assessed library sizes, requiring we first assess relative correlation and information content across the assays. We then demonstrated the utility of this information to enable maximal top model performance via comparison of linear and nonlinear models’ performances as measured by independent test set performance and relative degree of overfitting from the ratio of cross-validation to test set performances on predicting each of two low-throughput gold standard metrics for each protein of interest. As expected, models trained on those assays with higher mutual information for a given gold-standard metric performed maximally on the held-out task and yielded minimal overfitting degree relative to controls. The completion of the studies reinforces the conviction that high-throughput developability proxy assays can inform deep-learning models on both the retrospective and prospective protein variant prediction tasks to outperform contemporary naïve autoencoder-based representations alone. The research detailed herein thus heralds the utility of both creating large-scale developability datasets and designing modern data-driven deep-learning algorithms to leverage them to enable optimal traversal of the daunting sequence-fitness (here: developability) design space.Schmitz, Zachary. (2025). Data driven protein scaffold developability engineering. Retrieved from the University Digital Conservancy, https://hdl.handle.net/11299/275922
Minutes: Graduate Programs Committee, January 24, 2025
No full textUniversity of Minnesota Duluth. Graduate Programs Committee. (2025). Minutes: Graduate Programs Committee, January 24, 2025. Retrieved from the University Digital Conservancy, https://hdl.handle.net/11299/273904
Would you rather be sexy or healthy? relationships between the immune system and coloration in Common Redpolls (Acanthis flammea)
No full textUniversity of Minnesota M.S. thesis. 2025. Major: Integrated Biosciences. Advisor: Mark Clark. 1 computer file (PDF); v, 33 pages.Birds have long been studied as examples of sexual selection. There are many traits that can point to a bird’s quality as a mate, such as song, dance, and elaborate plumage features. Each of these traits has an energetic cost, and carotenoid-based plumage is one such trait. Carotenoid pigments are responsible for most yellow, orange, and red feathers, and almost a quarter of all bird species display carotenoid-based coloration. However, because carotenoids are only directly synthesized by plants, algae, and some fungi, birds must accumulate them in their diets before depositing them into their feathers. The pathway to produce red feathers, such as those displayed by Common Redpolls (Acanthis flammea), is more recently evolved and includes more carotenoid modification steps—and a potentially higher energetic cost—than yellow plumage. If a bird has enough energy to both produce these feathers and remain healthy, the plumage is an honest signal of quality. Conversely, if the bird is putting more energy towards plumage and gaining a mate, there may be a cost that affects other systems, such as the function of the immune system. Although limited, there have been studies conducted linking carotenoids and coloration to a stronger immune system and better condition. This work examines trends between coloration, body metrics, and immune system function in Common Redpolls to determine if plumage production is a direct signal of health. Ultimately, we found that the plumage coloration of redpolls is an honest signal of their health. Cap size in both males and females demonstrates immune health, where larger caps correlate with a stronger immune system. Also, redder breast coloration in mature males shows stronger humoral immunity.Swanson, Erika. (2025). Would you rather be sexy or healthy? relationships between the immune system and coloration in Common Redpolls (Acanthis flammea). Retrieved from the University Digital Conservancy, https://hdl.handle.net/11299/273523
Episode 189: Are We at Risk of Losing Our Vaccines?
No full textRuntime 59:32In "Are We At Risk of Losing Our Vaccines?", Dr. Osterholm and Chris Dall discuss declining childhood vaccination rates, a statement from the American Academy of Pediatrics on non-medical exemptions for mandated vaccines, and the recent termination of $500 million in mRNA vaccine research contracts. Dr. Osterholm also covers the latest COVID data and shares another "This Week in Public Health History" segment. Medical vs nonmedical immunization exemptions for child care and school attendance: policy statement (Hackell et al., Pediatrics, https://doi.org/10.1542/peds.2025-072714)Osterholm, Michael; Dall, Chris. (2025). Episode 189: Are We at Risk of Losing Our Vaccines?. Retrieved from the University Digital Conservancy, https://hdl.handle.net/11299/276468
Development and Characterization of a Swine Model of Non-lethal Critical Respiratory Depression Induced by Opioid Overdose
No full textAuthor manuscriptThis study characterized a swine model of fentanyl- and heroin-induced non-lethal apnea to support development of translational strategies for opioid overdose interventions. Spontaneously breathing, isoflurane-anesthetized Hanford swine (n=18; 4–25 kg) received intravenous fentanyl (n=12) or heroin (n=6) via constant rate infusion (fentanyl: 30 µg/kg/h; heroin: 1 mg/kg/h) until apnea. Fentanyl-treated pigs were either sexually immature (~2 months) or mature (~4 months); heroin-treated pigs were immature. Statistical comparisons used unpaired two-tailed Mann-Whitney and Gehan-Breslow-Wilcoxon tests (p<0.05). Data are median (IQR). Fentanyl doses to induce apnea were 17 (15–36) µg/kg (immature) and 8 (7–10) µg/kg (mature), while heroin dose was 360 (290–502) µg/kg. Serum fentanyl concentrations at apnea were 4 (3–7) and 6 (4–8) ng/mL, with norfentanyl levels of 1.5 (0.8–2.2) and 0.1 (0.1–0.2) ng/mL, respectively. Heroin exposure produced 6-acetylmorphine and morphine levels of 57 (44–91) and 34 (29–61) ng/mL. Return to spontaneous breathing occurred at reduced serum concentrations. In conclusion, this reproducible model enables evaluation of opioid-induced respiratory depression and supports therapeutic development. Sexual maturity, not sex, influenced opioid sensitivity. This model offers a foundation for assessing long-term effects of opioid exposure, including impacts on brain function and clinical treatment strategies.This work was supported, in part, by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (grant 1UG3DA057850-01 to Marco Pravetoni) and the University of Minnesota College of Veterinary Medicine (intramural funds to Alonso G. P. Guedes)Hatschbach, Eduardo; Raleigh, Michael; Hicks, Dustin; Baehr, Carly; Comer, Sandra; Pravetoni, Marco; Guedes, Alonso. (2025). Development and Characterization of a Swine Model of Non-lethal Critical Respiratory Depression Induced by Opioid Overdose. Retrieved from the University Digital Conservancy, https://hdl.handle.net/11299/273544
Episode 180: The April Fool's Tragedy
No full textRuntime 1:08:06In "The April Fool's Tragedy," Dr. Osterholm and guest host Dr. Cory Anderson discuss the devastating layoffs and funding cuts in public health that have unfolded over the past two weeks. Dr. Osterholm also shares the the latest news on the growing measles outbreak in Texas and answers an ID query about COVID lockdowns. CDC clone site, rife with false vaccine claims, hosted by group previously led by HHS Secretary, InfoEpi Lab (https://infoepi.substack.com/p/cdc-clone-site-rife-with-false-vaccine)