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Chemosensory Behaviors of Larval Aedes Aegypti and Aedes Triseriatus Mosquitoes
No full textColor poster with text, images, charts, and graphs.Mosquitoes are harmful, disease-carrying vectors that pose significant public health risks worldwide. Aedes aegypti, known for transmitting Zika Virus, Dengue, and yellow fever, poses a threat in various climates, while Aedes triseriatus—native to Wisconsin—transmits the La Crosse virus. While much is known about adult mosquito behavior, less is understood about the sensory behaviors of mosquito larvae. To address this gap, our lab is investigating the chemosensory behaviors of Ae. aegypti and Ae. triseriatus larvae, particularly in relation to foraging. We have refined protocols using the InVision device, a high-resolution camera system designed for tracking aquatic invertebrates, to monitor and quantify the behavior of mosquito larvae in response to chemical gradients emitted from a point source. With these methodologies, our research now focuses on sensory behavior variations across all mosquito larval and pupal stages. The mosquito life cycle consists of four instar (larval) stages, followed by a pupal stage before emerging into adulthood. Our previous findings suggest that L1 Ae. triseriatus and Ae. aegypti larvae do not rely on chemosensory modalities to locate food. Preliminary results indicate that foraging behavior increases in L2-L4 instars, suggesting a developmental shift in foraging strategies as larvae progress through these stages.NSF grant CNS-1920220; University of Wisconsin--Eau Claire Office of Research and Sponsored Program
IMPACTS OF DEICERS ON THE TRANSPORT OF PER- AND POLYFLUOROALKYL SUBSTANCES (PFAS) IN GROUNDWATER SYSTEMS
No full textPer- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are persistent environmental contaminants with known adverse effects on human and ecological health. Airports are recognized as substantial sources of PFAS, primarily through the use of aqueous film-forming foams (AFFFs). This study investigates the potential impact of airplane deicer solution, which is commonly used in large quantities in airports, on the transport of PFAS through groundwater systems. A series of column experiments were conducted using soil collected from a firefighting test area (FTA) located in Dane County, Wisconsin. The columns were wet packed with prepared soils and groundwater (with and without type 4 deicer) was injected into the packed columns. The effluents from the columns were collected over time and the concentrations of selected PFAS in the effluent samples were measured using ultra-high-performance liquid chromatograph (UHPLC, Shimadzu Nexera X2) coupled with an ultra-fast triple quadrupole mass spectrometer (UFMS, Shimadzu LCMS-8060). Our results showed that 1) the kinetics of PFAS release from contaminated soil followed first order kinetics model adjusted with the quantities of adsorbed PFAS, and 2) airplane deicer at environmentally relevant concentrations could significantly influence the release of PFAS from contaminated soils collected from AFFF sites. Our findings provide valuable insights into the environmental fate of PFAS in airport settings and inform management strategies for mitigating PFAS contamination in groundwater.2027-06-2
A Mouse, A Plumber, and You : How Disney and Nintendo Brought Japan and the U.S. Together Post-WWII Through Family Entertainment
No full textColor poster with text, charts, and photographs.I will be examining the history of Disney and Nintendo, how they have helped construct the childhoods of Japanese and Americans alike, and how they have helped the two countries heal from the second World War. Disney first took off around the start of WWII when they released Snow White and The Seven Dwarves in 1937. During the American occupation of Japan in the 1950's, as their movies flooded into the country, they helped to create a new, thriving animation and entertainment industry. Following WWII, Nintendo found growing success in this new entertainment landscape after a striking a partnership with Disney in 1958 to produce playing cards. Come the 1970s and 80s, they took the world by storm with revolutionary gaming systems. Come today, Disney and Nintendo are two of the biggest companies in the world. Disney is responsible for a sizable amount of popular animated movies and champions theme parks globally. Nintendo has pioneered the video game market and has greatly influenced positive public perception on gaming. Though both companies market towards children and families, they’ve found large fan bases with adults.University of Wisconsin--Eau Claire Office of Research and Sponsored Program
Understanding the Molecular Mechanisms of Biological Phase Separation and Biomolecular Condensate Formation of Globular Proteins
No full textColor poster with text, images, charts, and graphs.Biomolecular condensates (BMCs) are naturally occurring membraneless organelles formed through liquid-liquid phase separation (LLPS). They play significant roles in various cellular processes, including signal transduction, gene expression, and stress response. The thermodynamics of condensate formation involve a complex interplay between entropy and enthalpy. The loss in entropy due to ordered assembly formation inside the liquid-like condensate is compensated by the increase in intermolecular interaction enthalpy. The main factors that promote LLPS include changes in biomolecule concentration and intermolecular interactions. The LLPS process is sensitive to pH, temperature, and ionic strength. LLPS of intrinsically disordered proteins (IDPs) and unstructured domains/regions of proteins (IDPRs) are well documented. Recent studies suggest that globular proteins also form crowder-induced biomolecular condensates. However, the precise role of molecular crowding in LLPS-driven biomolecular condensate formation remains understudied, especially for globular proteins. A thorough understanding of the molecular mechanism of protein condensate formation and the impact of phase separation on enzymatic reactions is crucial to addressing issues related to cellular physiology. To investigate the molecular mechanism of condensate formation in crowded environments, globular proteins such as bovine serum albumin and prolyl-tRNA synthetase are being used alongside synthetic crowders like polyethylene glycols of variable sizes. Additionally, variable salt concentrations are employed to understand the effects of multivalent interactions in BMC formation. We will present the preliminary results of different globular protein samples with and without polyethylene glycol (PEG) as crowding agents at high and low salt concentrations.National Institute of Health Grant #: R15GM117510-02; University of Wisconsin--Eau Claire Office of Research and Sponsored Program
Poster: A Lightweight Pruning for Mitigating Neural Network Backdoor on Edge
No full textImage-based neural networks are widely used across diverse applications, yet their inherent susceptibility to backdoor attacks has raised growing concerns. In particular, data-free backdoor attacks, which exploit benign but redundant pathways to manipulate model predictions, pose significant risks. Existing defense methods rely heavily on conventional pruning strategies based on weight magnitude or neuron activation, which often cause excessive distortion of the original representations and lead to substantial loss of useful information. In this work, we propose a pruning-based defense method ALobot that leverages a label-dependence pruning. This method is especially well-suited for mitigating backdoors in models deployed to edge devices, where computational resources are constrained and defenses must lower attack success without imposing heavy overhead or degrading model performance. Specifically, we selectively prune neurons that contribute substantially to inter-class discrimination but minimally to intra-class consistency, achieving a noticeable reduction in backdoor attack success rate without sacrificing model performance through a lightweight mitigation. The initial results show that ALobot achieves a reduction in attack success rate by 2% to 8%, while maintaining a high clean performance and requiring modification of only 1/20 of the parameters compared to conventional L1-norm pruning and L2-norm pruning methods
FOR THE ANIMALS’ SAKE: MULTISPECIES ETHICS IN WISCONSIN WILDLIFE REHABILITATION CENTERS
No full textIn our anthropocentric world, no animal is free from human impact. This world, with humans at the center, is largely compounded by competing “and often conflicting social perspectives, inflexible legislative constraints, and shifting political agendas” (Paquet & Darimont, 2010, p.184) which often fail to consider the interests of our nonhuman kin. The wildlife rehabilitation field seeks to mitigate these impacts through caring for injured, orphaned, and displaced wildlife. Climate change, habitat fragmentation, and other large-scale human impacts continue contributing to a global increase in human-wildlife conflict as animals seek resources in closer proximity to human communities (Abrahms et al, 2023). As just one of the professions committed to wildlife welfare, the demands of wildlife rehabilitation centers (WRCs) are increasing. A few WRCs in Wisconsin care for as many as 5,000 wild animals per year, excluding the small animals not included in the intake statistics. Wildlife rehabilitators, in addition to this intense workload, encounter life-or-death ethical dilemmas while making decisions on an animal's care. Ethics helps to explain the life-worlds of wildlife rehabilitators, and how we as a public interpret our relationships to the nonhuman world.
Multispecies ethics is an emerging interdisciplinary field within environmental studies which prioritizes the intertwined relations of how various living beings coexist, influence each other’s lives, and form new co-narrated realities. Multispecies studies integrate theory and practice; therefore, my methods (especially those regarding humanistic interpretation) are directly informed by the theoretical groundings of the field. The theory behind multispecies ethics is rooted in “multispecies ethnography, etho-ethnology, anthropology of life, anthropology beyond humanity, extinction studies, and more-than-human geographies” (van Dooren et al., 2016). Exploring the complexity of rehabilitator’s decision-making processes through a
multispecies approach places focus on the diverse situational factors of each individual patient within the broader ecological community.
This thesis leverages a framework of care, ethical pluralism, and oral history to articulate the co-created narratives, realities, and associations developed between wildlife in wildlife rehabilitation settings and the professionals who work with them. This study aims to overcome the applied-theory gap in previous multispecies ethics research through humanistic interpretation of semi-structured interviews and participant observation at WRCs in Southern Wisconsin.1 I employ a metaethical and multispecies approach to examine each WRC’s unique applied ethical perspective, and how these perspectives merge in public-facing interactions. In this unique space of wildlife rehabilitation, I attempt to uncover the nature of rehabilitators’ moral judgments (metaethics) regarding wildlife suffering and, to an equal extent, how these ethics are practically applied
Optimization of Tooling and Flow Cavity Design for Paste Extrusion of Small Diameter Vascular Grafts
No full textColor poster with text, images, charts, and graphs.Small-diameter grafts have revolutionized artery repair since their introduction in 1954, providing life-saving solutions for patients with vascular diseases. These grafts are typically manufactured by extruding expanded polytetrafluoroethylene (ePTFE) into tubes. This research focuses on optimizing the tooling and flow cavity design for paste extrusion of small-diameter vascular graft components. One critical parameter in the extrusion process is the reduction ratio, or the ratio of cross-sectional areas of the material before and after extrusion. By varying tooling position and dimensions, we aim to create optimal reduction ratio profiles for various graft dimensions to facilitate successful extrusion processes.University of Wisconsin--Eau Claire Office of Research and Sponsored Program
POTENTIAL FOR MINERALIZATION OF SOIL ORGANIC MATTER TO SUPPLY CROP NITROGEN, INFLUENCE CROP YIELD AND IMPROVE NITROGEN RECOMMENDATIONS IN WISCONSIN SANDY SOILS
No full textWisconsin is an important state for agricultural food production. In particular, the Wisconsin Central Sands (WCS) region, has a large number of acres in vegetable production. The soils in this region are coarse textured and often deep, with low nutrient status and water holding capacity. This necessitates inputs of fertilizer and irrigation water for crop production to be profitable. Even when producers follow best management practices laid out by University of Wisconsin Extension, environmental factors can lead to nutrients leaching past the rooting zone of crops. Large rainfall or irrigation events can carry nutrients, in particular nitrogen (N) to groundwater faster than crops can take them up. Nitrogen lost from these agroecological systems can travel far from the point of application and cause a cascade of environmental and health concerns once in groundwater drinking supplies, and surface water, particularly in the Gulf of Mexico.
Sandy soils in temperate regions of the US often have low, but variable, amounts of soil organic matter (SOM). Current N application recommendations for corn in WI do not consider SOM content although SOM can influence N mineralization and availability. For all other crops, N application rates are recommended for ranges of SOM. The potential for SOM to mineralize and supply N for crop needs should be further investigated. Particularly in sandy soils in central Wisconsin that have been drained by ditches to historically promote agriculture in the region. The objective of this study was to quantify the effect of SOM on N mineralization, crop N uptake, and yield.
Soil and plant samples were collected from an agricultural field in vegetable production in the WCS containing a gradient of SOM content, ranging from 4% (low) to 9% (medium) and 15% (high) across the field. Soil plant available N and potentially mineralizable N (PMN) were measured biweekly during the 2019 and 2020 growing seasons to observe changes in soil N pools across time. Aboveground plant N and corn grain yield were estimated in 2019.
We found that medium SOM plots had the largest early to mid-season soil plant available N and plant uptake in 2019, which coincided with periods of rapid plant growth, but this did not result in significantly higher grain yield (medium: 11,652 kg ha⁻¹; low: 8,897 kg ha⁻¹; high: 7,753 kg ha⁻¹). Potentially mineralizable N concentrations were consistently larger in medium and high SOM plots than in low SOM plots throughout both growing seasons. In 2019, medium SOM plots had the most PMN on a field-scale on nearly every sampling date, particularly during May through July when crop N demand was highest. In 2020, under a pea–millet rotation, PMN was similarly larger in medium and high SOM plots throughout the growing season, although plant uptake could not be quantified in kg ha⁻¹ due to missing plant density data. High SOM plots in both years often had more PMN later in the season, when crop uptake slowed, highlighting the potential for N loss via leaching. These results indicate that SOM influences both the magnitude and timing of N availability, with medium SOM providing the closest alignment of soil N supply with crop demand in sandy soils of the WCS.
This research highlights how SOM gradients, including legacy SOM from past soil formation, can affect the synchronization of soil N supply with crop need in sandy agricultural soils. A better accounting of SOM in fertilizer recommendations could improve N use efficiency (NUE), while maintaining yield and reducing environmental degradation due to N loss in the WCS and other similar agroecosystems
Optimizing Math Department Scheduling
No full textColor poster with text, charts, and graphs.Scheduling classes is a challenging and time-consuming task. The mathematical technique of linear programming has the potential to simplify this challenge by building a model of linear constraints to find the most optimal solution that satisfies all the constraints. In this project, we are implementing a linear programming model using the DOCplex library in Python. The objective function represents instructor satisfaction with different courses and the constraints represent limitations such as the fact that one instructor cannot teach two courses at the same time. These constraints allow many ways to build a schedule. The goal of our program is to identify the most optimal solution, that maximizes the professor's satisfaction and class availability. We will present a system for encoding the preferences about number of preps and back-to-back courses, as well as discussing the advantages of using binary variables to represent combinations of courses, professors, and meeting patterns (such as MWF 9-9:50) instead of individual day-time pairs. We will also present results from adding constraints and preferences about course distribution throughout the day, depending on whether the number of sections is above or below a threshold.National Science Foundation under Grant No. 2015553; University of Wisconsin--Eau Claire Office of Research and Sponsored Program
The Tolerance of Religion
No full textColor poster with text and images.The aim of this project is to research and conceptualize the current as well as historical nuance of the tolerance of religion. The question this research will answer is whether society should embrace a more tolerant view of religion and instill the views of free speech and religion into the younger generation. This research comes at a time of significant differences among the population surrounding the topic of freedom of religion. Although many Americans continue to embrace the freedom of conscience behind the First Amendment, there is increasing polarization around how far religious freedom should go, which freedoms “count” as religious, and how the religious and irreligious should coexist with one another. This project's approach will use political theory, constitutional law, and historical writings to examine this question. The political theory aspect will characterize views of tolerance within scholarly works and how it applies to religious expression. The findings will be used to evaluate the standing of tolerance in today’s discourse and attempt to find changes. The findings of the research conclude that tolerance is still a heavily raised issue and has been since political discourse entered into the sphere of human interaction.University of Wisconsin--Eau Claire Office of Research and Sponsored Program