Jacksonville State University

Post-exercise recovery strategies influence the body’s ability to restore physiological homeostasis, replenish energy stores, repair muscle damage, and promote desired adaptations, which improve exercise performance. This narrative review examines the impact of nutritional strategies commonly used for enhancing recovery and subsequent exercise performance, particularly when athletes face short recovery periods. Carbohydrate ingestion is essential for glycogen replenishment, especially within the initial hours post-exercise, with its impact dependent on the types, timing, and amount. Protein is essential for accelerating muscle recovery and achieving a positive nitrogen balance, depending on the type and dosage. The co-ingestion of carbohydrates with proteins or fats is explored for its role in maximizing glycogen resynthesis and muscle repair, with evidence supporting the addition of protein to suboptimal carbohydrate intake for enhanced recovery. Moreover, this review addresses the potential benefits of creatine and caffeine co-ingestion for accelerating glycogen synthesis and improving subsequent performance. Hydration strategies, including the use of milk-based beverages and electrolyte solutions, are also discussed, emphasizing their importance in maintaining fluid balance and optimizing recovery. This review also highlights the emerging role of micronutrients such as omega-3 fatty acids, antioxidants, and sodium bicarbonate in reducing muscle damage and improving acid–base balance. Evidence supports the tailored use of these nutritional strategies, particularly for athletes managing tight competition/training schedules. Future research should focus on refining individualized approaches for recovery and investigating the impact of novel supplements on subsequent performance.

With the increasing use of open educational resources (OERs) in higher education, and the potential of OERs to enhance student learning, this study investigated minority students’ perceptions of using OERs in learning computer programming. The influence of minority students’ OER perceptions on their learning outcomes, as well as the relationships of the perception variables were explored. The participants were minority students from an HBCU institution in the southeastern United States. Quantitative approaches were used to analyze the collected data. The results indicated that the minority students’ perceptions of using OERs had a significant influence on their perceived learning outcomes in learning computer programming. OER self-efficacy did not influence the minority students’ perceived learning for programming. Understanding of OERs, OER interest, and OER self-efficacy significantly predicted the minority students’ perceived value/usefulness of OERs in learning coding.

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) have emerged as pivotal dimensions in fostering productive and inclusive work environments. Many public organizations have come forward to embrace a DEI mindset. Since emergency management agencies (EMAs) serve a diverse population that may be vulnerable to disasters, they must recognize DEI in their efforts to create a diverse workforce as well as to serve the community. Although the best practices in DEI for public organizations have been well established, there is a dearth of literature regarding the DEI best practices in emergency management. The objective of this study is to begin to create or further define best practices for EMAs for the successful implementation of DEI, especially at the local level.

Pharmacologic inhibition of RNA polymerase I activity represents a new therapeutic approach for Ewing sarcoma. This is the first time key components of the ribosome biogenesis pathway have been linked to Ewing sarcoma biology. image

This teaching case applies design thinking to a large-scale client project in a technical and professional communication (TPC) class. Using the 5-step design thinking process ("empathize, define, ideate, prototype, test") over 8 weeks, the students in an upper-division TPC course developed social media content and strategy for a statewide public relations campaign. The two authors, the instructing faculty and a senior student who served as project manager, illuminate how iterative design thinking, as a UX pedagogical practice, can help students set boundaries around ill-defined problems; mirror workplace collaboration to contribute to professional development; and build a toolkit for exercising agency and creativity as researchers, writers, and designers.

This teaching case applies design thinking to a large-scale client project in a technical and professional communication (TPC) class. Using the 5-step design thinking process ("empathize, define, ideate, prototype, test") over 8 weeks, the students in an upper-division TPC course developed social media content and strategy for a statewide public relations campaign. The two authors, the instructing faculty and a senior student who served as project manager, illuminate how iterative design thinking, as a UX pedagogical practice, can help students set boundaries around ill-defined problems; mirror workplace collaboration to contribute to professional development; and build a toolkit for exercising agency and creativity as researchers, writers, and designers.

Biomedicine today is experiencing a shift towards decentralized data collection, which promises enhanced reproducibility and collaboration across diverse laboratory environments. This inter-laboratory study evaluates the performance of biocytometry, a method utilizing engineered bioparticles for enumerating cells based on their surface antigen patterns. In centralized and aggregated inter-lab studies, biocytometry demonstrated significant statistical power in discriminating numbers of target cells at varying concentrations as low as 1 cell per 100,000 background cells. User skill levels varied from expert to beginner capturing a range of proficiencies. Measurement was performed in a decentralized environment without any instrument cross-calibration or advanced user training outside of a basic instruction manual. The results affirm biocytometry to be a viable solution for immunophenotyping applications demanding sensitivity as well as scalability and reproducibility and paves the way for decentralized analysis of rare cells in heterogeneous samples.

The ability to lubricate and resist wear at temperatures above 600 °C in an oxidative environment remains a significant challenge for metals due to their high-temperature softening, oxidation, and rapid degradation of traditional solid lubricants. Herein, we demonstrate that high-temperature lubricity can be achieved with coefficients of friction (COF) as low as 0.10-0.32 at 600-900 °C by tailoring surface oxidation in additively-manufactured Inconel superalloy. By integrating high-temperature tribological testing, advanced materials characterization, and computations, we show that the formation of spinel-based oxide layers on superalloy promotes sustained self-lubrication due to their lower shear strength and more negative formation and cohesive energy compared to other surface oxides. A reversible phase transformation between the cubic and tetragonal/monoclinic spinel was driven by stress and temperature during high temperature wear. To span Ni- and Cr-based ternary oxide compositional spaces for which little high-temperature COF data exist, we develop a computational design method to predict the lubricity of oxides, incorporating thermodynamics and density functional theory computations. Our finding demonstrates that spinel oxide can exhibit low COF values at temperatures much higher than conventional solid lubricants with 2D layered or Magnéli structures, suggesting a promising design strategy for self-lubricating high-temperature alloys.

This study examines differences in educational experiences and outcomes for high school (HS) students who participated in the International Baccalaureate (IB) Diploma Program and earned full diplomas compared to those who participated in the IB Diploma Program but did not earn the diploma. ACT scores, after-HS placement, and HS graduation rates of 256 participants were collected. One hundred and twenty two participants completed an online survey, and 12 participated in interviews. The results revealed that the educational outcomes and experiences for diploma and nondiploma earners were vastly similar. Diploma earners had significantly higher ACT scores, but their college entrance and other academic outcomes were similar to nondiploma earners. However, students who participated in the IB program had significantly higher academic success than other students. Even students who did not earn the full IB diploma had higher graduation rates and high average ACT scores than students at this school, state, and even at the federal level.

The medicalization of death has left gaps in the spiritual and psychosocial well-being of the dying. Factors like professional and caregiver burnout, lack of training, overburdened caseloads and rigid schedules, and other organizational constraints lead to holistic, humane care falling through the cracks. Consequently, the dying and their families are opting to rely on individuals who can bridge these gaps—end-of-life (EOL) doulas. EOL doulas employ a variety of non-medical practices from touch therapies to legacy projects to religious rites that provide support covering the emotional, spiritual, and practical aspects of dying. Utilizing qualitative interviews with 23 EOL doulas located and working in the United States, this research offers insights into doulas’ provisions of spiritual care, how death doulas’ understanding of the death transition inform spiritual care provisions, as well as how death doulas navigate differences in spiritual and religious belief systems between themselves and their clients. The study emphasizes the critical role of EOL doulas in bridging gaps in end-of-life care, providing personalized, compassionate support sometimes missing in institutional settings.

The analysis of social and biological networks often involves modeling clusters of interest as cliques or their graph‐theoretic generalizations. The ‐club model, which relaxes the requirement of pairwise adjacency in a clique to length‐bounded paths inside the cluster, has been used to model cohesive subgroups in social networks and functional modules or complexes in biological networks. However, if the graphs are time‐varying, or if they change under different conditions, we may be interested in clusters that preserve their property over time or under changes in conditions. To model such clusters that are conserved in a collection of graphs, we consider a cross‐graph ‐club model, a subset of nodes that forms a ‐club in every graph in the collection. In this article, we consider the canonical optimization problem of finding a cross‐graph ‐club of maximum cardinality in a graph collection. We develop integer programming approaches to solve this problem. Specifically, we introduce strengthened formulations, valid inequalities, and branch‐and‐cut algorithms based on delayed constraint generation. The results of our computational study indicate the significant benefits of using the approaches we introduce.

Small-market journalists occupy an important role in keeping local communities informed. This research examines the job-related stressors post-COVID these U.S. small-market newspaper journalists face that impact their stress and anxiety and how the support provided by their news organizations also contributes to their sense of well-being. Interviews with 17 journalists in the Southeastern United States indicate that key aspects of organizational support may have a significant impact on well-being and job satisfaction.