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INFLUENCE OF CULTIVATION PRACTICES AND STORAGE CONDITIONS ON POLYPHENOL CONTENT AND ANTIOXIDANT ACTIVITY IN APPLES
Get PDFPolyphenols, bioactive compounds widely present in fresh produce, including apples, offer significant health benefits such as gut modulatory, anti-inflammatory properties, antioxidant effects, and weight management. As global obesity rates rise, their prominence in fruits and vegetables makes them ideal targets for weight management interventions. Apples are the most consumed fruit in the U.S. and serve as a primary source of dietary polyphenols. However, environmental influences, agricultural practices, and post-harvest storage can influence polyphenol content in apples. Given that apples undergo storage for several months before reaching consumers, preserving their quality and nutritional value is crucial. This research aimed to assess the impact of cultivation practices and long-term commercial storage conditions, including refrigerated air and controlled atmosphere, on polyphenol contents in three apple varieties: ‘Granny Smith,’ ‘Cripps Pink,’ and ‘WA 38’. The results reveal that apple peels consistently exhibit higher levels of total polyphenolic content (TPC), total flavonoid content, and antioxidant activity compared to the flesh across all cultivars, both before and after 24 weeks of storage. The levels of TPC were influenced by apple cultivar, cultivation practices (organic vs. conventional production systems), and storage conditions. Notably, ‘Granny Smith’ apples maintain stable TPC levels in both flesh and peels during storage, while TPC levels in ‘WA 38’ and ‘Cripps Pink’ apple peels experience declines with storage. Furthermore, conventionally grown apples generally exhibit better preservation of phytochemicals during storage than their organic counterparts. These findings offer valuable insights into how cultivation practices and storage conditions influence apple polyphenols, providing potential strategies for enhancing the nutritional quality of apples and optimizing fruit preservation techniques
IMPROVING UNCERTAINTY QUANTIFICATION OF DEEP CLASSIFIERS A NEIGHBORHOOD CONFORMAL PREDICTION APPROACH
Get PDFSafe deployment of deep neural networks in high-stake real-world applications requires theoretically sound uncertainty quantification. Conformal prediction (CP) is a principled framework for uncertainty quantification of deep models in the form of prediction set for classification tasks with a user-specified coverage (i.e., true class label is contained with high probability). This dissertation proposes a novel algorithm referred to as Neighborhood Conformal Prediction (NCP) to improve the efficiency of uncertainty quantification from CP for deep classifiers (i.e., reduce prediction set size). The key idea behind NCP is to use the learned representation of the neural network to identify k nearest-neighbors calibration examples for a given testing input and assign them importance weights proportional to their distance to create adaptive prediction sets. We theoretically show that if the learned data representation of the neural network satisfies some mild conditions, NCP will produce smaller prediction sets than traditional CP algorithms. Our comprehensive experiments onCIFAR-10, CIFAR-100, and ImageNet datasets using diverse deep neural networks strongly demonstrate that NCP leads to significant reduction in prediction set size over prior CP methods
Examining the Moderating Effect of Self-Determination in the Association between Patient Activation and Engagement in Health-Promoting Activities
Get PDFObjective. Engagement in activities that promote overall brain health and well-being is often a key step in reducing risks to cognitive health in older adults. Patient activation, an indicator of health self-management, has been associated with healthier lifestyles and is a target of programs aimed at improving the health outcomes of older adults. This study examined the moderating effect of the psychological needs of autonomy, competence, and relatedness that canhelp enhance intrinsic motivation, in the relationship between patient activation and health behaviors. Method. Participants were community-living, cognitively normal older adults (age 65+) with subjective cognitive concerns who were enrolled in a lifestyle intervention. The data examined were from participants’ baseline visits in which they completed neuropsychological testing and self-report questionnaires. Moderation analyses were conducted using Hayes’ PROCESS macro for SPSS. Results. Results revealed a significant moderating effect of autonomy and competence. This effect showed that while there was no significant association between patient activation and healthy activity engagement at higher levels of autonomy and competence, there was a significant positive relationship at lower levels. Although results did not show a significant moderating effect of relatedness, it was found to be a significant predictor of healthy activity engagement. Conclusions. Findings suggest that patient activation has a significant impact on healthy behaviors for individuals who have a low baseline of autonomy or competence and no significant impact on those who are high in either of these factors. Future studies might examine other individual characteristics to elucidate potential means to facilitate health-related behavior change in older populations
DROUGHT, BURN, DROUGHT EFFECTS OF DROUGHT BEFORE AND AFTER FIRE ON MORTALITY AND PHYSIOLOGICAL FUNCTION IN PINUS CONTORTA SUBSP. LATIFOLIA SAPLINGS
Get PDFAn increase in global temperatures from climate change has driven an increase in drought in areas where frequent, low- and moderate-intensity fires are common. Human caused climate change, also known as anthropogenic climate change (ACC), has caused an increase in temperatures globally and has been linked as the leading driver of changes in regional temperatures and fire regimes, leading to a shift in important ecosystem functions and human ecosystems. Our ability to properly predict and anticipate when and where trees are most likely to suffer mortality by fire and drought is crucial for tackling problems in research, such as modeling future fire regimes and patterns, carbon emissions, and the impacts these fires can have on wildlife and human communities. We conducted pre- and post-burn drought experiments with 18 combinations of drought and fire treatments on Pinus contorta subsp. latifolia saplings to understand the responses and drivers of mortality in conifer saplings. We found that drought in combination with fire increased the likelihood of mortality in P. contorta saplings, and that the order and combination of drought and fire treatment had differential effects that varied among physiological responses we assessed. Overall, we discovered a dynamic interaction between drought and fire that varied with the timing and combination of these disturbances and different among variables we assessed. Metrics that have proved effective to predict death from fire alone in previous research were not always robust in our study when fire was combined with drought
Regulation of MACERATOR during Cytokinesis
Get PDFPlant cytokinesis is driven by the expansion of a plant-specific microtubule array the phragmoplast. The mechanism behind phragmoplast expansion remains poorly understood. Furthermore, the majority of regulatory proteins of microtubules in the phragmoplast are conserved in animals, which use a differentcytokinetic mechanism. Limited information about plant-specific regulators of microtubules in the phragmoplast hinders our progress in understanding the expansion process. One of the very few plant-specific microtubule associated proteins in the phragmoplast is MACERATOR4 (MACET4). It has been shown that MACET4 promotes microtubule nucleation in vitro. Our group demonstrated that MACET4 is expressed through all stages of mitosis but binds microtubules during cytokinesis. The major goal of this research is to determine how MACET4 activity is regulated during cytokinesis and why association ofMACET4 with microtubules of the mitotic spindle is inhibited. The central hypothesis of this work is MACET4 activity is regulated through interaction with other proteins and by phosphorylation. MACET4 phosphorylation sites are identified using open source prediction tools. Phospho-mimetic mutants weredesigned for testing the effect of phosphorylation on MACET4 activity in vitro and in vivo. To determine whether MACET4 is regulated through interaction with other proteins, pull-down assays and affinity chromatography were performed and results were analyzed by tandem mass spectrometry. The interactions were verified by bimolecular fluorescence complementation and microtubule biochemical assays. MACET4 interactions were verified with AUGMIN7 and γ-tubulin. The MACET4 protein interactions were analyzed in planta by crossing established Arabidopsis mutant lines. Novel marker lines were utilized to study both MOZART1a and KATANIN in the phragmoplast. The genetic interaction between Arabidopsis MACET4 and MACET5 with CLASP and AUGMIN7 were analyzed by crossing clasp-1 and/or augmin7-1 into macet4-1macet5. This work identified MACET4 as a tethering factor of AUGMIN7 subunit, part of the microtubule nucleation factor Augmin Complex. Additionally, the phosphorylation sites responsible for microtubule binding of MACET4 were identified. The experimentaldata presented here demonstrates that phosphorylation regulates MACET4 in cell division and reveals the role of MACET4 and MACET5 in branching microtubule nucleation during plant cytokinesis. In conclusion, this research contributes to advancing our understanding of plant-specific cytokineticmechanisms and the role of microtubule-associated proteins in phragmoplast expansion
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