The LAIR at East Texas A&M
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Generation of DNA Codes from Dihedral Groups
No full textIn this work, we constructed DNA codes with better lower bounds than the previously known codes. We use Dihedral G-circulant matrices as generator matrices of additive codes over GF(4). The obtained codes satisfy Hamming distance, reverse, reverse complement and the GC-content constraints which are important for DNA computing. In addition, we investigate two additional constraints namely, free from secondary structures and free from consecutive repetitions
The Characterization of Apis mellifera Gut Microbiome Structure
No full textThe Western honey bees, Apis mellifera, have an essential role in pollination. They are responsible for the pollination of almost 16% of flowering plants and 400 agricultural plants contributing to almost $15 billion in the US economy. Along with their importance in pollination, honey production is another significant contribution of Apis mellifera. Because nurse bees gather pollen and nectar from a wide variety of flowers in the environment, they are exposed to a variety of factors including insects and parasites that might be infesting the plants. If such insects and parasites enter the bee hives, it could lead to colony loss. Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), first noticed in 2006 in the United States, is a condition in which adult bees disappeared from the hives leaving only young broods and queens. CCD has become a long-term problem in apiculture. Pesticides, pathogens, and environmental factors can cause colonies to collapse. There is a need for more scientific research on honey bees (Apis mellifera) to counter the loss of colonies. There are a few research projects on honey bee gut microbiome structures conducted in the past, but most of them focus on a molecular level. This study examines viable microbiome populations in the honey bee gut of strong and weak hives through classical microbiological techniques followed by qPCR analysis. The selected hives were examined for environmental parameters including temperatures, humidity levels, predation, and honey and brood production. Based on these parameters, strong hives (SH) and weak hives (WH) were categorized. Nurse bees from two SH and two weak WH were collected, aseptically dissected, homogenized in phosphate-buffered saline (PBS), and inoculated onto LB and Blood agar. Bacterial colonies were examined for their morphology and Gram response. Colonies were also examined via qPCR in parallel. Both SH and WH had stable community structures during the summer and the fall. qPCR analysis showed that Firmicutes and Bacteroidetes had higher concentrations based on lower average Cq values. The study suggests that the viable honey bee gut microbiome structure has higher concentrations of Firmicutes, Bacteroidetes, and moderate levels of Gammaproteobacteria, Actinobacteria and Alphaproteobacteria, and is less affected by the different environmental parameters
The Experiences of Rural Mental Health Counselors During the Coronavirus (COVID-19) Pandemic
No full textLittle is known how rural mental health counselors respond in disaster situations, and relatively no information exists regarding rural mental health counselors during the COVID-19 pandemic. The aim of this study was to qualitatively explore the experiences of rural mental health counselors during this global crisis. Since the start of the pandemic, there has been a significant rise in mental health service demand, and mental health counselors have faced challenges in meeting client needs, using teletherapy almost exclusively, and co-experiencing a global disaster. These challenges are likely exacerbated in rural areas where resources are limited, and mental health counselors experience enhanced occupational stressors. Using purposeful sampling, semi-structured interviews, and thematic analysis, this study yielded five overarching themes that provide rich descriptions of the experience, responses, and impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on a sample of 11 rural mental health counselors in Texas. Implications for the field of counseling and future research were also generated from the findings
Folding Collision Probability in the Nyquist Folding Receiver
No full textAs the radio-frequency spectrum becomes more crowded, there is a growing need for signal processing technology that can instantaneously interpret an ultra-wideband range of frequencies. Existing conventional systems, however, are not the most efficient solution due to the processing capability limitations of current analog-to-digital converter technology. Specifically, with regard to radars, traditional receivers are required to process large amounts of unused data, wasting time and energy. This project highlights a newer analog-to-information receiver that utilizes compressive sensing which is seeking to overcome these challenges. The innovative technology being evaluated allows users to sample far below the standard Nyquist/Shannon sample rates while still being able to detect and reconstruct the original received signal. The focus of this project is the process of calculating the probability of folding collisions using a custom generated MATLAB simulation, thus allowing for a better understanding and interpretation of the data received by the Nyquist Folding Receiver or other similar signal processing devices
Rebuilding Statistically Encoded Dataset by Generative Method
No full textThe last two decades have been experiencing a surge in the data produced every hour. This sudden surge in data is due to the proliferated use of technologies for both personal and public use. The types of data produced in mass amounts include finance, medical, personal, and social media; although this data could be in any form numerical, images, audio, or video. This research paper is focused on one-dimensional Time series data. The increased amount of data may lead to many limitations like very low transmission speed, limitations with storage, requiring high frequency of bandwidth to transfer large amounts of data, and very slow I/O speed. These limitations lead to the development of tools for compressing the data, it could be either lossless or lossy, the latter causing loss of data to achieve the high compression ratio. The paper’s focus is to reconstruct the lossy compressed data where the newly built data must have a similar distribution of data points to that of real data. To accomplish this purpose the combination of the following concepts is implemented, The Time Series Generative Adversarial Networks – Time GAN (Yoon et al., 2019) is a generative model where the adversarial mechanism is used to increase the efficiency of the generator to synthesize data and for data compression in this study, the IDEALEM (Implementation of Dynamic Extensible Adaptive Low Exchangeable Measure) model developed by the Novel Data Reduction Based on Statistical Similarity (Lee et al., 2016) paper, which applies the Kolmogorov-Smirnov Test as a statistic to compress the data. The efficiency of the decoding technique in the IDEALEM could be increased by the combination of two models, the IDEALEM with the Time GAN leading to a new model developed within our research referred to as Hinted Time GAN (Hinted Time Series Generative Adversarial Networks). The Hinted Time GAN outperforms IDEALEM, and Time GAN by producing less noisy reconstructed data. The performance of the Hinted Time GAN is proved qualitatively by the line plots and quantitatively by calculating the errors
Effects of Transformative Sustainability Education in Accounting on Male and Female Students Attitudes Toward Sustainable Development
No full textGiven Earth\u27s finite resources and the detrimental climate effects of modern society, sustainability is increasingly important to citizens, governments, corporations, and higher education institutions. Accountants are essential in communicating corporate sustainability efforts to stakeholders through sustainability accounting, reporting, and assurance services that improve information credibility. In addition, adult education benefitted greatly from the development and inclusion of transformative learning theory, which was instrumental in developing effective pedagogies for teaching sustainability education. The purpose of this study was to examine curricular innovation in higher education using multivariate analysis of variance and t-test to measure the effects of transformative sustainability education in accounting on the attitudes of male and female undergraduate accounting students toward the four sustainable development concepts of environment, economy, society, and education using an online Qualtrics survey. The results diverged from previous studies in that no significant differences in the students\u27 attitudes toward sustainable development existed based on sustainability education or gender. Significant correlations showed that the students’ attitudes toward the four dimensions of sustainable development were positively and moderately correlated, but results indicated significant differences in the students’ attitudes toward the four dimensions. Students\u27 mean scores were highest for the social and education dimensions, and they reported that sustainability education was valuable to their future careers. The transformative sustainability education provided critical thinking and problem-solving skills that students noted were important for solving complex sustainability problems but also for other business decisions. They chose as the most effective concise video assignments illustrating sustainable development in real-life business. However, they also valued the group collaboration in discussion boards for peer interactions, exchange of ideas, and mutual support in considering complex sustainability issues. Last, case studies provided more variety and in-depth coverage of sustainable development efforts
Ras-MEK Signaling Pathway Confers Growth Factor Independence in Erythroleukemia Cell Line UT-7
No full textAcute myeloid leukemia (AML) is a heterogeneous group of blood disorders in whichover-proliferation and lack of differentiation lead to nonfunctional myeloblasts. The most common form of leukemia in the United States is AML and it has a poor prognosis in patients with a cure rate of 15%. The Ras-MAPK pathway is suggested to drive proliferation in AML and 12-27% of AML cases have a mutation in this pathway. The UT7-GF cell line, an AML cell line generated in our laboratory grows and proliferates without growth factors. Based upon these results, we hypothesized that the proliferative capabilities of the AML cell line in serum-free media are due to the deregulation of the RAS-ERK signaling pathway. The mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) pathway consists of the Ras-Raf-MEK-ERK signaling cascade that is activated by a series of phosphorylations leading to the translocation in ERK1/2 into the nucleus to turn on genes that regulate growth and proliferation. In proliferation assays, unlike the growth factor-dependent parental UT7-EPO cells, the UT7-GF cells survived in the absence of serum. Immunoblot analysis using phosphospecific antibody detected hyperphosphorylation of p44/42 (ERK) and p38 (MEK1) in UT7-GF cells suggesting constitutive activation of Ras-MEK-ERK pathway. U0126, an inhibitor of MEK1, abrogated the phosphorylation of p44/42 and p38 in UT7-GF cells. Consequently, U0126 treatment reduced the viability of UT7-GF with an IC50 of 0.96μM. In summary, we identified a direct role for constitutively active MEK-ERK pathway in the growth and proliferation of an AML cell line without serum growth factors. Therefore, interrupting the ERK-MEK pathway could potentially improve clinical outcomes in AML
