University of South Alabama Institutional Repository
University of South Alabama Institutional RepositoryNot a member yet
5383 research outputs found
Sort by
Episode 1 - Introduction
No full textThis episode is the introduction to this podcast series. In it, students introduce the listener to Down the Bay as they have come to know and understand it, and discuss some of the oral history interview clips that helped them to get an overall sense of the community\u27s history.
What Happened Down the Bay? is a podcast created by University of South Alabama students in summer 2025, through the Jean O’Connor-Snyder Internship Program (JOIP) funded by the David Mathews Center for Public Life. Down the Bay is a historic Black neighborhood south of downtown Mobile, Alabama, and this podcast explores the history of Down the Bay as community members have related it through oral history interviews. In preparation for the internship, students participated in an oral history seminar with Drs. Ryan Morini and David Messenger, working with interviews from the Down the Bay Oral History Project collection at the McCall Library before meeting with elders from the community and recording new interviews for the collection. The podcast combines clips from the archived interviews with students’ reflections on how their own home communities and experiences relate to those that people describe from Down the Bay
Impacts of Nutrient Addition and Disturbance on Coastal Dune Arthropod Communities and Trophic Interactions
No full textCoastal dune ecosystems face ongoing threats from human-mediated disturbance and altered resource availability. Because these dunes provide critical habitat for many organisms, including shorebirds, beach mice, and arthropods, changes in disturbance regimes or resource availability can impact plant communities and higher trophic levels by altering plant richness and productivity, which in turn influence arthropod abundance and diversity. To examine how disturbance and nutrient addition affect arthropod communities, we established twenty 5×5 m plots on Dauphin Island, crossing mechanical disturbance with a 10 g m⁻² addition of nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium, replicated across five experimental blocks. Arthropods were sampled using three pitfall traps per plot collected weekly in the summers of 2022 and 2023, then identified to family, grouped into functional guilds, and enumerated. Using structural equation modeling, we found that coastal dune plant and arthropod communities were largely resistant to disturbance, but nutrient enrichment (NPK addition) indirectly altered arthropod communities through shifts in plant richness and forb biomass, highlighting how post-disturbance nutrient inputs can reshape trophic linkages within these ecosystems
Implementing Diabetic Foot Screening for Type 2 Diabetes Patients in an Outpatient Clinic
No full textBackground and Purpose: Diabetic foot complications, including infections, ulcers, and amputations, present a significant health risk for Type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) patients. These complications necessitate routine screenings for detection and treatment, which many clinics lack despite strong evidence supporting their efficacy. This project aims to determine if using diabetic foot screening tools will enhance type 2 diabetic foot care practices in the clinic compared to previous practices.
Methods: This project utilizes quasi-experimental and quantitative with pre-test and post-test components to analyze outcome differences and establish variable relationships. It uses the Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA) cycle to introduce a routine diabetic foot screening protocol for patients with T2DM (18+ years) in an outpatient clinic. The protocol focuses on staff training, patient education, and standardized screening tools like the Inlow 60-Second Diabetic Foot Screen.
Result: The study includes 43 type 2 diabetic patients, predominantly male (74.4%), while females were 25.6%. The results reveal that the statistical analysis confirmed a significant improvement in knowledge scores following the intervention, with a 24.0% increase. However, the targeted 50% improvement was not achieved due to high baseline scores. Additionally, a paired sample t-test demonstrated a substantial increase in completed foot exams postintervention, indicating enhanced screening practices by clinic staff. According to Inlow’s 60- Second Screening criteria, 93% of patients require annual screenings, while 7% should undergo screenings every 6 to 12 months along with foot care education. 7% exhibited toenail changes and bunions. 3% had fungus, prior amputation, and peripheral arterial disease, while 77% were found to have inappropriate footwear. Two referrals were made to a vascular surgery and one to a podiatrist. Overall, 93% of screened patients were identified as very low risk and 7% as moderate risk.
Conclusion: Routine diabetic foot screenings are crucial in managing T2DM, as they help identify foot complications early. Implementing this quality improvement project (QIP) in an outpatient setting highlights the benefits of incorporating routine screenings to enhance patient outcomes, minimize the risk of severe foot complications, and decrease healthcare expenses related to care for diabetic foot health. Keywords
University of South Alabama OA Week 2025 Promotional Fliers
No full textPromotional fliers for presentations associated with International Open Access Week 2025 on the University of South Alabama campus
Computational Study of the Separation of Aromatic/Aliphatic Mixtures using Ionic Liquids
Get PDFAromatic hydrocarbons are a valuable product in many industrial processes. Separating aromatic compounds from solutions of mixed hydrocarbons is notoriously expensive and inefficient, particularly in solutions with less than 20 wt% aromatics. Ionic liquids (ILs) are salts that remain liquid at room temperature and exhibit extremely promising properties such as negligible vapor pressure and high thermal stability. The tunable nature of ILs, arising from the interchangeability of ions, is a promising attribute for the use of ILs in difficult separation processes. This study involves the separation and adsorption between aromatic and aliphatic compounds with various ILs to study the selectivity and loading capacity of four ILs. The Gibbs Ensemble is implemented in the continuous fractional component method (CFC) to simulate and facilitate the absorption of heptane and/or toluene into the various ILs. Four novel perarylphosphonium cations are paired with the bistriflimide anion to form the ILs of interest. These are used to simulate the separation of heptane and toluene at varying mole fractions. Results will show a selectivity favoring toluene as well as give some insight to the distribution ratio of the compounds and the loading capacity of each IL.https://jagworks.southalabama.edu/southalabama-shgrf-posters/1001/thumbnail.jp
Perceptions of Power and Consent: The Role of Gender, Race, and Sexual Orientation in Assessments of Victimhood in High School Student-Teacher Relationships
Get PDFSexual abuse, in all of its many forms, has been a controversial topic for centuries. This project looks at a specific subset of sexual abuse: high school student-teacher assaults. Victims of sexual abuse often face barriers to justice. This project addresses several demographic barriers. Research has shown that people of color and members of the queer community are typically reluctant to report due to police and societal perceptions of these groups. Teenagers face additional challenges, such as not know how their peers, parents, school, or community will react. Additionally, their abuser is an authority figure, meaning that these victims could have unhealthy relationships with authority figures for the rest of their lives. These assaults could also be the closest thing teenage victims experience to a first romantic relationship, thus increasing the potential of the victim to experience future unhealthy romantic relationships. Older teenage victims, on the other hand, might be viewed as adults by the public due to their budding adulthood. This project aims to see how the race, gender, and perceived sexuality of the abuser and victim influence public perception of these assaults. This survey will feature a series of vignettes that feature a sixteen- year- old student and a male teacher. The age of the teacher will be unknown, and the race and sexuality will vary. The students, male and female, will be the same race as their abuser. All survey respondents were students at the University of South Alabama. These findings demonstrate that Black female students were less likely to be perceived as victims, and that sexuality did not seem to have any influence
Effects of the Gravity Gradient on the Path of 1I/‘Oumuamua
Get PDFIn October 2017, the asteroid 1I/’Oumuamua first passed into viewing range [1]. The asteroid is notable for being the first interstellar object to enter the solar system. 1I/’Oumuamua was also unusual in its geometry; it is thought to have an aspect ratio of 6:1 and a length of approximately 400 m [2] [3]. The asteroid was observed to experience a non-Keplerian acceleration estimated to be on the order of 1×10−6 m s-2 Several theories have been proposed for the cause of this acceleration, all of which are non-gravitational in nature: volatile outgassing, photon pressure, and solar winds [1][4]. However, none of these sources have been definitively proven to be able to provide accelerations large enough to explain the unexpected motion [1] [5]. This project aims to examine the possibility of gravitational effects on the orbital mechanics of 1I/’Oumuamua due to its elongated shape.https://jagworks.southalabama.edu/honors_college_posters/1045/thumbnail.jp
Role of Evolutionarily Conserved G4 Structures in Enhancer-Promotor Interactions
Get PDFGene regulation is governed by complex networks of interactions between enhancers and promoters, regions of the genome that are typically distant from one another yet functionally linked through chromatin looping. Recent research has revealed the significant role of Gquadruplexes (G4s) in facilitating these interactions. This thesis explores the role of long Gquadruplex regions (LG4s) in enhancer–promoter communication, proposing that these regions mediate physical interactions between enhancers and their target promoters through direct G4:G4 interactions. Using a chromatin conformation capture (EQuIP-seq), electrophoretic mobility shift assays (EMSA), and luciferase reporter assays, the study demonstrates that LG4s may drive gene expression by promoting the formation of stable enhancer–promoter loops independent of protein factors. In addition to functional insights, the evolutionary conservation of LG4s across multiple species was examined, revealing that these G4-rich regions are highly conserved. Crossspecies conservation analyses, including comparisons between human, mouse, and other vertebrates, underscore the fundamental role of G4-mediated enhancer–promoter interactions in maintaining gene regulatory networks throughout evolution. This conservation suggests that G4- mediated regulation is not a species-specific phenomenon, but rather a conserved mechanism across eukaryotic organisms, essential for coordinating gene expression in diverse biological contexts. These findings provide a novel perspective on the evolution of gene regulation, highlighting the role of DNA structural motifs like G4s in shaping the architecture of the genome
Three-Dimensional Environmentally Sustainable Neuromorphic Computing System Based on Natural Organic Memristor
Get PDFA three-dimensional neuromorphic (3D) computing architecture based on environmentally sustainable natural organic honey memristors is proposed in this thesis. A set of comprehensive and experimental results indicate that the proposed systems exhibit remarkable inference accuracy, consistently surpassing the 90% threshold, even with different challenges such as device variations and nonlinearity. This study also considers four different conductance drift situations, the effects of analog-to-digital converter (ADC) quantization, and multiple algorithms, such as VGG8 and DenseNet-40. The deliverable of this thesis will test the stability of the proposed systems and explore their potential applications and scalability in real-world situations
What is Excavation?
Get PDFExcavation is the scientific investigation of buried archaeological remains. In our Ask an Archaeologist series, we answer commonly asked questions about archaeological terms and processes. This video was produced by the USA Center for Archaeological Studies and Motivation Media Inc. as part of the I-10 Mobile River Bridge Archaeological Project. This project was funded by the Alabama Department of Transportation and the Federal Highway Administration. Project partners include the USA Center for Archaeological Studies, Wiregrass Archaeological Consulting, The Doy Leale McCall Rare Book and Manuscript Library, and the USA African American Studies Department.https://jagworks.southalabama.edu/cas-video_ask-an-archaeologist/1009/thumbnail.jp