PfCSP-Ferritin Nanoparticle Malaria Vaccine Antigen Formulated with Aluminum-salt and CpG 1018® Adjuvants: Preformulation Characterization, Antigen-Adjuvant Interactions, and Mouse Immunogenicity Studies (Dataset)

Circumsporozite protein (CSP), the most abundant surface protein on the parasitic Plasmodium falciparum (Pf) sporozoite and an attractive target for malaria vaccine design, has been shown to induce protective humoral response in humans. In this work, we characterized and formulated a promising recombinant PfCSP immunogen (155) candidate consisting of two PfCSP epitopes (i.e., junction, NANP repeat) fused to H. pylori apoferritin forming a 24-mer nanoparticle. In addition, two N-linked glycans were engineered to mitigate possible anti-apoferritin immune responses and a universal T-cell epitope was included to further enhance immunogenicity. Physicochemical characterization of the 155 antigen was performed including primary structure, post-translational modifications, conformational stability, and particle size. A competitive ELISA was developed to assess antigen binding to a PfCSP-specific mAb. The in vitro antigenicity of the 155 antigen was measured upon formulation with adjuvants, including aluminum-salts (i.e., AlhydrogelTM, Adju-PhosTM) and the TLR-9 agonist CpG 1018®, when freshly combined and after storage at different temperatures over 3 months. The in vivo immunological impact of various adjuvanted formulations of the 155 antigen was investigated in mice. The results support formulation of 155 with AlhydrogelTM + CpG 1018® adjuvants as a promising recombinant malaria vaccine candidate from both a pharmaceutical and immunological perspective

International Trade Law: A Comprehensive E-Textbook, Volume 8 Growth, Development, and Poverty (6th Revised Edition)

This book is Volume Eight of an Eight-Volume set. All of the Volumes are available in KU ScholarWorks. Links to all eight volumes are available in the Abstracts file in this record. About the Author: Born in Toronto of Indian and Celtic heritage, Rakesh (Raj) Kumar Bhala is a dual Canadian-U.S. citizen prominent in the fields of International Trade Law, Islamic Law (Sharī‘a), and Law and Literature. Raj is a University Distinguished Professor at the University of Kansas, School of Law (KU Law). He is published widely world-wide – authoring over 100 scholarly articles and 13 books, including the International Trade Law Textbook, which has been used at over 100 law schools around the globe. Ingram’s Business Magazine designated him as one of “50 Kansans You Should Know.” Raj has testified before the U.K. Parliament, House of Commons, International Trade Committee, on trade and human rights. Media frequently call upon Raj. Across 65 consecutive months (from January 2017-October 2022), “On Point” was his column on International Law and Economics, which Bloomberg Quint / BQ Prime (Mumbai) published and distributed to approximately 6.2 million readers globally. Raj is a Harvard Law School (HLS) graduate (Cum Laude). As a Marshall Scholar, Raj earned two Master’s degrees, from the London School of Economics (LSE) in Economics, and from Oxford (Trinity College) in Management (Industrial Relations). His undergraduate degree is from Duke (Summa Cum Laude, Phi Beta Kappa), where he was an Angier B. Duke Scholar and double-majored in Economics and Sociology. After HLS, Raj practiced at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, where he twice won the President’s Award for Excellence thanks to his service as a delegate to the United Nations Conference on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL), along with a Letter of Commendation from the U.S. Department of State. He is a member of the State Department’s Speaker Program. Raj has served in officer positions at the International Bar Association (IBA) and Inter-Pacific Bar Association (IPBA), on the Executive Board of Directors of the Carriage Club of Kansas City (including as Treasurer), and been on the Alumni Association Board of the University School of Milwaukee (USM), his high school alma mater. He is grateful to his USM teachers for a liberal arts education that made all good things possible. Raj loves fitness training, has finished 115 marathons, including the “Big Five” of the “World’s Majors” (Boston twice, New York twice, Chicago twice, Berlin, and London). He enjoys studying Shakespeare and (especially since becoming Catholic at Easter Vigil 2001) Theology – and watching baseball.Does participation in cross-border importation, exportation, and direct and portfolio investment enhance human well-being? In particular, does international trade stimulate economic growth and development, and does it alleviate poverty? These hotly debated controversies are the heart of Volume Eight. To engage in this debate, it is necessary to understand Development Economics. That is the subject of Part One. How are “growth,” “development,” and “poverty” defined and measured? Armed with clear answers, this Part describes the classic theoretical models of economic growth, development, and poverty reduction. They include Rostow’s Stages of Economic Growth, and the Fei-Ranis Labor Surplus Model. The potential role of trade in them is highlighted. Equally importantly, this Part also reviews the empirical record of the contribution of trade to growth, development, and poverty across the half-century following the end of the Second War and de-colonization. Thus, the records of countries that pursued export-oriented versus import-substitution policies are contrasted. Part Two spells out and critically analyzes the leading programs in International Trade Law designed to benefit developing and least developed countries: the Generalized System of Preferences (GSP), a GATT-WTO exception to the most-favored nation (MFN) obligation. This Part also highlights one among many national-level, targeted preference schemes, namely, the U.S. African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA). Unfortunately, GSP and AGOA have underrealized their full potential to help poor countries. This Part explains why they have not done so. Volume Eight, and thus the eight-Volume set, conclude with a review and evaluation of the trade laws and policies of India. India is the world’s most populous country, the world’s largest democracy, and the world’s most religiously pluralistic country. Its trade regime, characterized by import substitution and protectionism in the decades after the 15 August 1947 British Partition of the Indian Sub-Continent, pivoted in 1991 to openness. But, the pivot is partial: India’s trade liberalization is inchoate, and its free trade agreement (FTA) program is only modestly ambitious. What might the future hold for India and, therefore, the world? Overall, Volume Eight clearly manifests the interdisciplinary nature of International Trade Law through the pressing questions of inequality and injustice in the world trading system. Like the other seven Volumes of International Trade Law: A Comprehensive E-Textbook, this Volume is available Open Access, and thus freely, quickly downloadable

Library-coordinated institutional membership in The Carpentries: A qualitative case study (Interview questions and coding scheme)

This deposit contains the questions used during the semi-structured interviews and focus group, as well as the qualitative coding scheme. To protect participant identities, the transcripts that constitute this project's data are not shared. Any codes in the coding scheme describing potentially identifiable aspects of research participants are excluded from this shared version of the codebook.A Carpentries institutional membership can help an organization build a program of recurring workshops teaching computing and data tools and skills. However, little guidance is available for starting and sustaining a Carpentries membership. This qualitative case study examines the first five years, 2015-2020, of the University of Oklahoma's institutional Carpentries membership. The study explores the institution's Carpentries activities, membership workflows, multi-unit sponsorship, and perceived value by membership participants. Carpentries membership operations are labor-intensive and demand intention to balance employee and volunteer labor. Individuals value the welcoming instructor community a membership can help create. Carpentries philosophy can conflict with university priorities. Carpentries memberships should be run using the same practices as Carpentries workshops

A multi-method, multi-rater approach to understanding avoidance in childhood anxiety and its impact on treatment outcomes

These are the slides from a presentation given at Association of Depression and Anxiety of America on 04/05/2025.Background: Childhood anxiety is prevalent, affecting ~25% of youth. Children with anxiety often avoid situations, thoughts, or objects that they perceive as threatening. Although avoidance temporarily reduces anxiety by providing escape from perceived threat, it maintains symptoms over time. Avoidance encompasses behavioral, cognitive, and attentional mechanisms; thus, it may be best captured by a multi-method, multi-rater approach. The purpose of this study was to 1) explore if multi-method measures of behavioral, cognitive, and attentional avoidance load onto a single avoidance factor and 2) understand how that avoidance factor relates to treatment outcomes for clinically anxious youth. Methods: Participants were 133 youth (Mage=11.06, SD=1.53) diagnosed with an anxiety disorder (e.g., generalized, social, and/or separation) in a larger treatment outcome study comparing CBT and child-centered therapy. Behavioral and cognitive avoidance was measured via child-report on ecological momentary assessment (EMA): one item assessing distraction and one item assessing suppression. Behavioral avoidance was assessed via clinician-report on the Pediatric Anxiety Rating Scale (PARS). Attentional avoidance was measured by a child dot-probe eye-tracking task. Treatment outcomes were measured by SCARED-C/P scores. A principal component analysis (PCA) was conducted, with all avoidance measures expected to load onto a single factor. The avoidance factor was used as a predictor in regressions on SCARED-C/P scores at post-treatment, controlling for baseline scores and treatment condition. We hypothesized that avoidance would be related to better treatment outcomes. Results: In the PCA including all avoidance measures, the Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin value was below threshold (.498), indicating that these data were not suitable for factor analysis. Exploratory factor analyses (EFA) were then conducted to see if the two EMA items loaded onto a single factor of real-world avoidance and the two measures associated with in-lab evaluation (PARS and eye-tracking) loaded onto a single factor of lab-based avoidance. The EMA items both loaded onto a single factor, with an eigenvalue of 1.45 and communalities of 0.72, explaining 100% of the variation in items. For the PCA with eye-tracking and the PARS, Bartlett’s Test was not significant (p=.06); thus, the data were unsuitable for a PCA. Results of the multiple linear regression predicting SCARED-C scores from the real-world avoidance construct indicated that only therapy type (β=-4.3, p<.05) and baseline SCARED-C scores (β=.38, p<.05) were significant predictors. Multiple linear regression results predicting SCARED-P scores found that both the EMA avoidance factor (β=1.65, p=.003) and baseline SCARED-P scores (β=.58, p<.001) were significant predictors. Conclusions: It is possible that our avoidance measures each capture a unique mechanism underlying avoidance in childhood anxiety; the EMA items loaded onto a single factor, potentially due to shared method variance. EMA items predicted SCARED-P scores with worse avoidance at baseline predicting more anxiety post-treatment, suggesting that interventions may not have adequately ameliorated avoidance. The lack of shared variance among avoidance measures highlights the necessity of multi-method, multi-rater report to comprehensively understand avoidance as this may be an important target for interventions due to its impact on treatment outcomes for anxious youth

Moving Beyond Mapping: A Guide to Ecosystem Measurement

In this paper, we argue that equipping ecosystem builders, leaders and community champions with more rigorous methods, such as network analysis, for measuring their impact potential is crucial to driving systems change at scale. We advocate for moving beyond simply mapping an ecosystem to measuring it. This means adding rigor to your efforts by quantifying an ecosystem’s strengths and challenges, its structure and functioning, the influencers and the outliers, and the dynamic interrelationships that exist. These aspects are what matter for ecosystem science

DATA: Ecological niche modeling applications to infectious diseases

This is the dataset that accompanies the recent publication in Biodiversity Informatics, by Islam et al. that can be found at https://journals.ku.edu/jbi/article/view/23725Ecological niche modeling (ENM) is a widely used analytical approach for predicting species distributions and has been applied to study spatial epidemiology of infectious diseases by identifying potential transmission-risk areas. However, research evaluating the fundamental components and assumptions of ENM in disease systems remain limited, raising concerns about its reproducibility and transparency. To address this gap, we conducted a systematic review and evaluated articles on ENM applications to infectious diseases between 2020 and 2022. We reviewed 78 articles to extract information following a checklist provided by (Zurell et al. 2020) and summarized the information for each component (e.g., study subject, location, duration). The spatial extent of study areas varied from village to global scales, temporal duration ranged from 1 to 101 years, and the organismal levels ranged from individuals (57.7%) to populations (33.3%). Less frequently reported components included temporal autocorrelation tests (2.66%), algorithmic uncertainty (28.21%), temporal resolution (35.90%), background data (44.87%), coordinate reference system (41.02%), model performance of validation data (46.15%), and model averaging (20.51%). Our findings highlight a lack of consistency and transparency in disease ecology and biogeography studies, which may lead to misleading ENM applications in spatial epidemiology. Researchers and reviewers applying ENM to disease systems should clearly report these fundamental modeling components to ensure biologically sound and actionable health. This article outlines the best practices in modeling disease systems and identifies major gaps in the current literature

TBI and post-concussion symptoms as predictors of insomnia

This is the paper from a presentation given at International Neuropsychological Society on 02/15/2025 .Objective: Sleep disturbances, including insomnia, are common following Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI). Gender, race, and age disparities have been observed to be related to TBI outcomes, although their relationships to sleep-related problems are not well understood. The objective of this study is to examine demographic and health correlates of sleep problems among TBI survivors and healthy controls. Participants and Methods: Data from the Federal Interagency Traumatic Brain Injury Research (FITBIR) Informatics System was used. Participants were 1601 adults with a history of TBI as well as healthy controls recruited for the TRACK-TBI study. Demographic characteristics as well as sleep problems, measured by the Insomnia Severity Index (ISI), and post-concussion symptoms, measured by the Rivermead Post Concussion Symptoms Questionnaire (RPQ), were extracted from datasets. A multiple linear regression model was used to examine the relationship between demographic characteristics of the sample and sleep outcomes. Results: Participants included were primarily male (65.20%), White (79.88%), had completed at least High School (70.95%), had a mean age of 41.28 years (SD = 16.72), and self-reported sustaining a TBI (n = 1811, 73.77%) at the time of the study. The majority of this sample reported no symptoms of insomnia (84.25%), with 32.51% reporting subthreshold symptoms, 13.29% reporting moderate symptoms, and 5.50% reporting severe insomnia symptoms. Participants also reported limited post-concussion symptoms according to the RPQ (mean = 10.24, SD = 13.16), and 6.46% of participants reporting moderate-severe post-concussion symptoms (e.g., headaches, dizziness, difficulty concentrating). Overall, the model accounted for 40% of the variance in the data set (R2 = 0.40). Among the variables explored, both increased post-concussion symptom severity (t = 32.02, p < 0.001) and having suffered a TBI (t = 4.30, p < 0.001) were significantly correlated with increased insomnia symptom severity. Conclusions: Post-concussion symptoms appeared to be significantly associated with insomnia among our sample. Further, TBI patients were significantly more likely to report sleep problems compared to the healthy controls. Other demographic characteristics did not appear to significantly predict insomnia symptoms in our model; however, systemic disparities may limit access to research studies and our sample was likely not representative of the population of TBI patients in the US. Researchers should continue to recruit diverse samples and investigate potential explanations for these observed disparities in the field. Further, sleep problems have been observed to exacerbate cognitive deficits among healthy and TBI patients alike. It will be imperative for neuropsychologists to continue to monitor insomnia and other sleep disturbances following TBI in their assessments

Long-Lived Charge-Transfer Excitons in a Graphene-PTCDI-TiOPc Trilayer Heterostructure (Dataset)

The excel file contains all experimental data. The zip file contains all code and data of DFT calculations presented in Figure 5.Excitation transfer across the interfaces between graphene, perylenetetracarboxylic diimide (PTCDI), and titanyl phthalocyanine (TiOPc) was studied using transient absorption and photoluminescence spectroscopy. Both photoluminescence quenching and transient absorption measurements confirm the presence of a type-II interface between PTCDI and TiOPc. While the graphene/PTCDI interface is expected to exhibit type-I behavior, transient absorption measurements indicate that only electrons transfer from PTCDI to graphene, with no evidence of hole transfer. Density functional theory calculations reveal significant ground-state electron transfer from graphene to PTCDI, resulting in band bending that prevents excited holes from transferring from PTCDI to graphene. This feature is exploited in a trilayer heterostructure of graphene/PTCDI/TiOPc, where the spatial separation of photoexcited electrons and holes in graphene and TiOPc, respectively, leads to the formation of long-lived photoexcitations with a lifetime of approximately 500 ps. Furthermore, spatially resolved transient absorption measurements reveal the immobile nature of these excitations, confirming that they are charge-transfer excitons rather than free electrons and holes. These results provide valuable insights into the complex interlayer photoexcitation transfer properties and demonstrate precise control over layer population and the recombination lifetime of photocarriers in such hybrid heterostructures

The Impact of Parental Self Efficacy and Perceived Control on Parental Anxiety in the Context of Stressful Parent-Child Interactions

These are the slides from a presentation given at Anxiety and Depression Association of America on 04/04/2025.The relationship between parental anxiety and maladaptive parenting behaviors is shaped by cognitive constructs that influence emotional regulation. Self-efficacy, or a parent’s confidence in managing caregiving demands, and perceived control, the extent to which parents feel they can influence outcomes in their parenting role, are two critical cognitive constructs that may mitigate or exacerbate parental anxiety. This study examined relationships among parental self-efficacy, perceived control, and anxiety, with a particular focus on the interaction between self-efficacy and perceived control in the context of everyday parenting challenges. We predicted that low self-efficacy combined with low perceived control would be associated with particularly high anxiety during stressful parent-child interactions.Participants included 43 mothers scoring above the clinical cutoff on the SCAARED, with a child aged 7-9 years (M = 7.74, SD = 0.79; 60.5% female). Following baseline questionnaires, participants completed a 16-day ecological momentary assessment (EMA) protocol (up to 54 surveys), assessing their emotions, thoughts, and behaviors during stressful interactions with their child. The Inaction subscale of the Parental Acceptance and Action Questionnaire (PAAQ) was our measure of parental self-efficacy (higher scores indicate lower self-efficacy). For each EMA survey, mothers were asked to identify the most stressful interaction they had with their child since the last survey. Mothers then reported on how much control they felt they had over the situation and how anxious they felt at the worst point in the interaction, both on a 1-5 Likert scale. Data were aggregated across all surveys to create overall measures of perceived control and anxiety per participant.A linear regression was conducted to examine the impact of parental self-efficacy, perceived control, and their interaction on anxiety. The model revealed a significant main effect of self-efficacy (β = 0.14, SE = 0.06, 95% CI [0.01, 0.26], p = 0.04), with lower levels of self-efficacy being related to higher levels of anxiety, The interaction effect was also significant (β = -0.05, SE = 0.02, 95% CI [-0.09, -0.01], p = 0.03). A simple slopes analysis was consistent with our hypothesis: anxiety was highest at low levels of both perceived control and parental self-efficacy.Results indicate that parental self-efficacy and perceived control interact to influence parental anxiety in real-world caregiving situations. Understanding how low self-efficacy and low perceived control contribute to heightened anxiety may elucidate the mechanisms underlying maladaptive parenting behaviors. Future research should examine within-subjects effects to capture the dynamic interplay of these constructs over time and utilize larger, more diverse samples to enhance generalizability. Another important future direction will be determining how state parental anxiety during stressful interactions relates to child psychosocial functioning

Tourism in Russia's Altai Republic: Indigenous Perceptions

These are the slides from a presentation given at American Association of Geographers on 03/24/2025.The government of Russia’s Altai Republic encourages tourism for local socio- economic development. The year 2020 brought 2.2 million visitors to the Altai Republic, an ecologically pristine but economically depressed region, with a population of just 220,200. Ethnic Russians constitute a majority of the Altai Republic’s citizenry, but Indigenous groups make up 34 percent of the population. Using surveys and interviews, this study analyzed perceptions of tourism among four rural Indigenous groups in 2018–2019 concerning maintaining local culture, improving the standard of living, and preserving the environment. Survey participants generally did not agree that tourism helps them to maintain local culture or to improve the local standard of living, although interview respondents gave positive and negative viewpoints. Both those surveyed and those interviewed expressed overwhelming concern for the preservation of the natural environment and alarm regarding illegal and excessive hunting by outsiders