Iowa State University

The Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's disease risk locus FYN kinase is implicated in neurodegeneration and inflammatory signaling. To investigate in vivo mechanisms of Fyn-driven neurodegeneration, we built a zebrafish neural-specific Gal4:UAS model of constitutively active FynY531F signaling. Using in vivo live imaging, we demonstrated that neural FynY531F expression leads to dopaminergic neuron loss and mitochondrial aggregation in 5 day larval brain. Dopaminergic loss coincided with microglia activation and induction of tnfa, il1b and il12a inflammatory cytokine expression. Transcriptome analysis revealed Stat3 signaling as a potential Fyn target. Chemical inhibition experiments confirmed Fyn-driven dopaminergic neuron loss, and the inflammatory response was dependent upon activation of Stat3 and NF-κB pathways. Dual chemical inhibition demonstrated that Stat3 acts synergistically with NF-κB in dopaminergic neuron degeneration. These results identify Stat3 as a novel downstream effector of Fyn signaling in neurodegeneration and inflammation.

How the Internet is used and any negative outcomes of engagement with it—especially with regards to children—is a topic of great interest, bearing legitimate investigation. Proposed identifiers of problematic internet use(PIU) include aspects of use in correlation with distress or impairment across biological, psychological, sociological, and/or occupational/academic functioning. Adolescents and those with vulnerabilities across developmental or sociological domains are particularly susceptible. Although validated instruments have been utilized to assess PIU, concerns surrounding the methodology, currency, and some validation measures of existing and cross-sectional screening tools and a lack of those with true external validity and variance, combined with some disagreement surrounding PIU, have impeded its diagnostic acceptance. Current investigative approaches to PIU include clarifying problematic gambling and gaming criteria, psychotherapeutic therapy, pharmacological interventions, and non-invasive neurostimulation therapies targeting cortical brain regions. As child screen time appears to be increasing, further research, ethical health/social policy changes, and digital literacy programs are strongly endorsed. To avoid online engagement dysregulating or harming children, digital policy youth user protection standards, pragmatic key player dialogues, transparent reassessments of digital-centric business models without compromising less resourced countries, and even globally agreed child online safety regulations are also recommended.

This chapter summarizes the content and themes from the four chapters in this section on online gaming, violent and aggressive behaviors, and online gambling in youth. The chapters taken together suggest a convergence of online behaviors in which learning may contribute across behaviors. While strong data suggest relationships, albeit sometimes of modest magnitudes, across these domains, less is known regarding directionality and how moderating and mediating factors operate. However, given the prevalence of these behaviors during development and their potential impacts, improved understanding is needed in order to provide individuals, and perhaps particularly pediatricians, with the appropriate information to help promote the healthy development of youth.

Fertility rates have fallen below replacement levels in many economies. We examine the relationship between female incomes and fertility for college graduates in the United States. Female income is likely endogenous to fertility, and candidate instrumental variables are likely imperfect. We use the Nevo and Rosen (2012) imperfect instrumental variable procedure to estimate two-sided bounds for the effect of female income on fertility. The effect of female income on fertility is unambiguously negative and non-trivial, but the magnitude is relatively small. Our results suggest that the recent fertility slowdown in the U.S. is not primarily due to higher female incomes.

Cotton leafroll dwarf virus (CLRDV), a threat to the cotton industry, was first reported in the United States (US) as an emergent pathogen in 2017. Phylogenetic analysis supports the hypothesis that US CLRDV strains are genetically distinct from strains in South America and elsewhere, which is not consistent with the hypothesis that the virus is newly introduced into the country. Using database mining, we evaluated the timeline and geographic distribution of CLRDV in the country. We uncovered evidence that shows CLRDV had been in the US for over a decade before its official first report. CLRDV sequences were detected in datasets derived from Mississippi in 2006, Louisiana in 2015, and California in 2018. Additionally, through field surveys of upland cotton in 2023, we confirmed that CLRDV is present in California, which had no prior reports of the virus. Viral sequences from these old and new datasets exhibited high nucleotide identities (>98%) with recently characterized US isolates, and phylogenetic analyses with their homologs placed these sequences within a US-specific clade, further supporting the earlier presence of CLRDV in the country. Moreover, potential new hosts, including another fiber crop, flax, were determined through data mining. Retrospective analysis suggests CLRDV has been present in the US since at least 2006 (Mississippi). Our findings challenge the current understanding of the arrival and spread of CLRDV in the US, highlight the power of data mining for virus discovery, and underscore the need for further investigation into CLRDV's impact on US cotton.

The ocean is facing many anthropogenic stressors caused from both pollution and climate change. These stressors are significantly impacting and changing the ocean’s ecosystem, and as such, methods must continually be developed that can improve our ability to monitor the health of marine life. For cetaceans, the current practice for health assessments of individuals requires live capture and release, which is expensive, usually stressful, and for larger species impractical. In this study, we investigated the potential of exhaled breath condensate (EBC) samples to provide unique metabolomic profiles from healthy killer whales (Orcinus orca) of varying known age and sex. EBC collection is a non-invasive procedure that has potential for remote collection using unmanned aerial vehicles, thus improving our ability to understand physiologic parameters within wild populations while minimizing stress from collection procedures However, descriptions of the available metabolome within EBC and its clinical significance within animals of known health and age must be described before this technique can be considered diagnostically useful. We describe normal variations of the metabolome across age and sex and provide evidence for the potential of this breath analysis method to become a valuable adjunctive tool for assessing the health of managed-care and free-ranging killer whales.

Bottom-up nano- to micro-fabrication is crucial in modern electronics and optics. Conventional multi-scale array fabrication techniques, however, are facing challenges in reconciling the contradiction between pursuit of better device performance...

A petrophysical model that accurately relates bulk electrical conductivity (σ) to pore fluid conductivity (σw) is critical to the interpretation of geophysical measurements. Classical models are either only applicable over a limited salinity regime or incorrectly explain the nonlinear‐to‐linear behavior of the σ(σw) relationship. In this study, asymptotic limits at zero and infinite salinity are first established in which, σ is expressed as a linear function of σw with four parameters: cementation exponent (m), the equivalent value of volumetric surface electrical conductivity (σs), the volume fraction of overlapped diffuse layer (ϕod) and parameter χ representing the ratio of the volume fraction of the water phase to that of the solid phases in the surface conduction pathway. Subsequently, we bridge the gap between the two extremes by employing the Padé approximant (PA). Given that parameter χ exhibits a marginal influence on the σ(σw) curve, based on measurements for 15 samples, we identify its optimal value to be 0.4. After setting the optimal value of χ, we proceed to evaluate the performance of the PA model by comparing its estimates and estimates made by two existing models to measured values from 27 rock samples and eight sediment samples. The comparison confirms that the PA model estimates are more accurate than estimates made by existing models, particularly at low salinity and for samples with higher cation exchange capacity. The PA model is advantageous in scenarios involving the interpretation of electrical data in freshwater environments.

Shoot apical meristem (SAM) is the origin of aerial structure formation in the plant life cycle. However, the mechanisms underlying the maize SAM development are still obscure. Here, approximately 12 700 cells were captured from the 5‐day‐old shoot apex of maize using a high‐throughput single‐cell transcriptome sequencing. According to the gene expression patterns, we partitioned the cells into 8 cell types with 13 transcriptionally distinct cell clusters and traced the developmental trajectory of shoot apex. Regulatory network analysis of transcription factors (TFs) showed that three core TFs, AP2‐EREBP‐transcription factor 14 (ZmEREB14, Zm00001d052087), MYB histone 4 (ZmMYB4) and HSF‐transcription factor 8 (ZmHSF8) potentially regulated the SAM development. Functional validation revealed that ZmEREB14 affected the SAM development and thereby regulated the maize yield formation. Our results characterised the inherent heterogeneity of SAM at single‐cell resolution and provided new insights into the mechanisms of SAM development.

This study reports the prevalence of inpatient, emergency department (ED), and outpatient mental health service usage of children/youth before, during, and after onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in Rhode Island. Additionally, we identify significant changes in usage across these time periods and the prevalence of each service type contingent upon various demographic profiles. This retrospective observational analysis used Rhode Island Medicaid claims to identify the unique children and youth who used inpatient, ED, and outpatient mental health services across three key time periods: pre-onset (March 2019-February 2020); onset (March 2020-February 2021); and post-onset (March 2021-February 2022). We used z-tests to analyze changes in the proportion of children/youth who accessed these services in each period. We examined relationships between demographic characteristics and time period with chi-square tests. Significant decreases in inpatient and ED usage were identified from pre-onset to onset (p < .05). While inpatient nearly returned to pre-pandemic usage in post-onset, ED usage remained lower. Outpatient usage increased significantly leading up to the pandemic but remained at similar levels between pre-onset and post-onset. From pre-onset to post-onset, females grew as a percentage of all inpatient, ED, and outpatient users. Over this same period, the proportion of inpatient users aged 12–18 increased and the proportion of ED and outpatient users aged 19–24 increased. Female usage of mental health services increased significantly, and older children/youth seemed to drive any significant increases. Future public health and disaster preparedness policies should focus on the unique mental health needs of these socially vulnerable groups.

Confessions are an important evidentiary part of the legal process, and false confessions have been notable contributors to wrongful convictions. However, academic research in the psychology and law field primarily relies on student or volunteer samples in staged exercises, methodological features that lack ecological validity for replicating police interrogation or the pressures distinctive to high stakes crime investigations. Here, we provide an integrative review of research and data on false confessions during police interrogations with distinctions of key concepts, relevant case law pertaining to confessions including several U.S. Supreme Court decisions, updating the typology of false confessions, the quantification of false confessions, risk factors for false confessions, interrogation risk factors for false confessions, validity threats to false confessions research, and recommended directions for informing courts and the law.

For multi-variable finite measure spaces, we present in this paper a new framework for non-orthogonal $L^2$ Fourier expansions. Our results hold for probability measures $\mu$ with finite support in $\mathbb {R}^d$ that satisfy a certain disintegration condition that we refer to as “slice-singular”. In this general framework, we present explicit $L^{2}(\mu )$-Fourier expansions, with Fourier exponentials having positive Fourier frequencies in each of the d coordinates. Our Fourier representations apply to every $f \in L^2(\mu )$, are based on an extended Kaczmarz algorithm, and use a new recursive $\mu$ Rokhlin disintegration representation. In detail, our Fourier series expansion for f is in terms of the multivariate Fourier exponentials $\{e_n\}$, but the associated Fourier coefficients for f are now computed from a Kaczmarz system $\{g_n\}$ in $L^{2}(\mu )$ which is dual to the Fourier exponentials. The $\{g_n\}$ system is shown to be a Parseval frame for $L^{2}(\mu )$. Explicit computations for our new Fourier expansions entail a detailed analysis of subspaces of the Hardy space on the polydisk, dual to $L^{2}(\mu )$, and an associated d-variable Normalized Cauchy Transform. Our results extend earlier work for measures $\mu$ in one and two dimensions, i.e., d=1 ($\mu$ singular), and d=2 ($\mu$ assumed slice-singular). Here our focus is the extension to the cases of measures $\mu$ in dimensions $d >2$. Our results are illustrated with the use of explicit iterated function systems (IFSs), including the IFS generated Menger sponge for d=3.

Wet tropical forests play an important role in the global carbon (C) cycle, but given current rates of land‐use change, nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) limitation could reduce productivity in regenerating forests in this biome. Whereas the strong controls of climate and parent material over forest recovery are well known, the influence of vegetation can be difficult to determine. We addressed species‐specific differences in plant traits and their relationships to ecosystem properties and processes, relevant to N and P supply to regenerating vegetation in experimental plantations in a single site in lowland wet forest in Costa Rica. Single‐tree species were planted in a randomized block design, such that climate, soil (an Oxisol), and land‐use history were similar for all species. In years 15–25 of the experiment, we measured traits regarding N and P acquisition and use in four native, broad‐leaved, evergreen tree species, including differential effects on soil pH, in conjunction with biomass and soil stocks and fluxes of N and P. Carbon biomass stocks increased significantly with increasing soil pH (p = 0.0184, previously reported) as did biomass P stocks (p = 0.0011). Despite large soil N pools, biomass P stocks were weakly dependent on traits associated with N acquisition and use (N2 fixation and leaf C:N, p < 0.09). Mass‐balance budgets indicated that soil organic matter (SOM) could supply the N and P accumulated in biomass via the process of SOM mineralization. Secondary soil P pools were weakly correlated with biomass C and P stocks (R = 0.47, p = 0.08) and were large enough to have supplied sufficient P in these rapidly growing plantations, suggesting that alteration of soil pH provided a mechanism for liberation of soil P occluded in organo‐mineral soil complexes and thus supply P for plant uptake. These results highlight the importance of considering species' effect on soil pH for restoration projects in highly weathered soils. This study demonstrates mechanisms by which individual species can alter P availability, and thus productivity and C cycling in regenerating humid tropical forests, and the importance of including traits into global models of element cycling.

Consumption of fresh produce, such as leafy greens, is often encouraged as part of a healthy diet. Hence, indoor facilities for hydroponic production of leafy greens are increasingly being established. However, fresh produce entails a higher risk of microbial foodborne illnesses than processed foods. Listeria monocytogenes is a major source of fresh produce contamination and is among the leading causes of severe foodborne illnesses in the United States, with a 16% mortality rate. Tools for rapid monitoring are needed for pathogens such as L. monocytogenes to prevent outbreaks. In this manuscript, we have demonstrated the feasibility of a multi-aptamer approach for development of label-free aptasensors targeting L. monocytogenes in irrigation water for lettuce hydroponic production. We use screening studies with surface plasmon resonance to rationally develop mixtures of relevant aptamers for targeting L. monocytogenes . Based on this screening, multiple aptamers targeting extracellular structures on intact L. monocytogenes were tethered to platinum-modified laser inscribed graphene electrodes. This is the first report of a L. monocytogenes biosensor based on laser inscribed graphene. We show that mixing multiple aptamers with varying affinity improves the diagnostic performance over one aptamer alone in complex sample matrices (lettuce hydroponic water). Multi-aptamer biosensors showed high accuracy for L. monocytogenes and were at least three times more selective than Escherichia coli (Crooks, K12, O157:H7) with an accuracy of 85%. The limit of detection (10 CFU/10 mL) is based on data which were significantly different after calibration toward L. monocytogenes or E. coli (Crooks) and validated against gold standard molecular analysis (polymerase chain reaction). Rapid screening of pathogens is a global need to meet food safety and water quality regulations. This study shows the importance of sensors targeting more than one bacterial surface structure in complex samples relevant to the food-water nexus.

In this work, Oxford Nanopore sequencing is tested as an accessible method for quantifying heterogeneity of amplified DNA. This method enables rapid quantification of deletions, insertions, and substitutions, the probability of each mutation error, and their locations in the replicated sequences. Amplification techniques tested were conventional polymerase chain reaction (PCR) with varying levels of polymerase fidelity (OneTaq, Phusion, and Q5) as well as rolling circle amplification (RCA) with Phi29 polymerase. Plasmid amplification using bacteria was also assessed. By analyzing the distribution of errors in a large set of sequences for each sample, we examined the heterogeneity and mode of errors in each sample. This analysis revealed that Q5 and Phusion polymerases exhibited the lowest error rates observed in the amplified DNA. As a secondary validation, we analyzed the emission spectra of sfGFP fluorescent proteins synthesized with amplified DNA using cell free expression. Error-prone polymerase chain reactions confirmed the dependency of reporter protein emission spectra peak broadness to DNA error rates. The presented nanopore sequencing methods serve as a roadmap to quantify the accuracy of other gene amplification techniques, as they are discovered, enabling more homogenous cell-free expression of desired proteins.

The transport of conserved quantities like spin and charge is fundamental to characterizing the behavior of quantum many-body systems. Numerically simulating such dynamics is generically challenging, which motivates the consideration of quantum computing strategies. However, the relatively high gate errors and limited coherence times of today's quantum computers pose their own challenge, highlighting the need to be frugal with quantum resources. In this work we report simulations on quantum hardware of infinite-temperature energy transport in the mixed-field Ising chain, a paradigmatic many-body system that can exhibit a range of transport behaviors at intermediate times. We consider a chain with L = 12 sites and find results broadly consistent with those from ideal circuit simulators over 90 Trotter steps, containing up to 990 entangling gates. To obtain these results, we use two key problem-tailored insights. First, we identify a convenient basis – the Pauli Y basis – in which to sample the infinite-temperature trace and provide theoretical and numerical justifications for its efficiency relative to, e.g., the computational basis. Second, in addition to a variety of problem-agnostic error mitigation strategies, we employ a renormalization strategy that compensates for global nonconservation of energy due to device noise. We discuss the applicability of the proposed sampling approach beyond the mixed-field Ising chain and formulate a variational method to search for a sampling basis with small sample-to-sample fluctuations for an arbitrary Hamiltonian. This opens the door to applying these techniques in more general models.