Exploring fungal and viral pathogens associated with intermediate wheatgrass, a promising new small grain crop

Small grain production in Kansas and other states in the central United States is a crucial component of agricultural economies. One emerging small grain is Kernza®, the grain harvested from intermediate wheatgrass (IWG, Thinopyrum intermedium). This crop is a perennial grass in contrast to common annual wheat varieties grown worldwide. This aspect of IWG allows it to develop a large root structure which provides soil structure and prevents the need for yearly tillage. With its recent emergence, however, there is little data available about the susceptibility of Kernza® to common small grain diseases. We are collecting and analyzing samples of Kernza® from growers to identify pathogens, with a special focus on Fusarium head blight (FHB). We cultured 29 samples by surface disinfesting grains, then incubating them on Spezieller Nahrstoffarmer Agar (SNA). The nutrient composition of SNA encourages growth of Fusarium spp. The resulting cultures were then used for DNA analysis to determine the species of fungi present. Additionally, 22 leaf samples obtained from growers were subjected to DAS-ELISA to determine if intermediate wheatgrass can be infected with wheat streak mosaic virus, a common viral pathogen of wheat. Our results indicate that Kernza® is susceptible to both FHB and wheat streak mosaic virus. Growers looking to plant Kernza® should be aware of these potential pathogens and take appropriate action to mitigate potential yield loss. Further investigation regarding the potential of other pathogens that could infect IWG is necessary.

Platinum Vacation Rentals

David LehmanI choose to create my honors project simultaneously with the business I started while in college. My business is called Platinum Vacation Rentals and I am a property manager at the Lake of the Ozarks. I currently manage seven rental properties for my clients. Throughout this project I will explain the steps I took to get to where I am today, the materials I have created and maintained, as well as how Covid impacted my business and my future plans for Platinum Vacation Rentals

Investigating the effects of calcium carbonate and benzoic acid, corn protein sources, and a dried fermentation product in the diets of nursery pigs

Master of ScienceDepartment of Animal Sciences and IndustryJoel DeRoucheyJason WoodworthThe 3 chapters of this thesis involve 1) effects of added calcium carbonate with and without benzoic acid on weanling pig growth performance, fecal dry matter, and blood Ca and P concentrations, 2) evaluation of different corn protein sources on nursery pig growth performance and fecal dry matter, and 3) evaluation of a dried fermentation product administered through drinking water on nursery pig growth performance, fecal E. coli characterization, antibiotic usage, and mortality. Chapter 1 utilized 1,055 pigs in two experiments. In Exp. 1, 695 pigs were used in two groups to evaluate increasing calcium carbonate (CaCO₃) levels from 0 to 1.80%. Experiment 2 utilized 350 pigs to investigate the interactive effects between CaCO₃ and benzoic acid. In Exp. 2, CaCO₃ was included at 0.45, 0.90, and 1.35% with and without 0.50% inclusion of benzoic acid. In both experiments, increasing CaCO₃ in the diet decreased G:F. In Exp. 2, there was no evidence for CaCO₃ x benzoic acid interactions, but providing benzoic acid improved ADG, ADFI, and tended to improve G:F. As well, the level CaCO₃ was directly reflective of serum Ca; as CaCO₃ decreased in the diet, so did serum Ca. Chapter 2 involved 670 nursery pigs in two experiments to investigate corn co-products as replacements to specialty protein sources in the swine industry. Experiment 1 utilized 315 pigs and observed decreased growth performance when feeding 5 or 10% of corn protein sources. The second experiment utilized 355 pigs and observed that a fourth corn protein source did not influence growth performance compared to a control. Increasing this fourth corn protein source increased daily gain and feed intake, with intermediate inclusion levels having the greatest ADG and ADFI. Gain-to-feed decreased linearly with increasing this fourth corn protein. Finally, chapter 3 utilized 34,749 pigs in two experiments to evaluate a dried fermentation product administered through drinking water on nursery pig growth performance, fecal E. coli characterization, antibiotic usage, and mortality. Experiment 1 was conducted in a research setting utilizing 350 nursery pigs, where the dried fermentation product did not influence growth, antibiotic usage, fecal consistency, or E. coli presence. Experiment 2 was conducted in commercial nurseries utilizing 34,399 nursery pigs, where providing the dried fermentation product did not influence growth performance, reduced antibiotic injections, but increased nursery mortality

A Convoluted Neural Network for Object Detection of Common Flower-Visiting Insects

An important aspect of pollinator ecology is monitoring and identifying the kinds of animal visitors to flowers. Conventional methods often use video recording or camera traps to collect data and human analysts for manual review. However, because of the large volumes of data collected and partiality in human reviewers, these methods are costly in terms of time and resources, can be prone to human error, and require taxonomic expertise. Computer vision (CV) is a branch of deep learning that has demonstrated promise as a lower-cost and rapid alternative to conventional methods for pollinator monitoring. Object detectors are a kind of deep learning network which use CV to identify and localize multiple different objects within an image. An object detector may be placed on a camera in the field to process in real time video and record different visitors to flowers, thus cutting out time for manual review. For this project, an object detector will be trained on 10,000 images from the iNaturalist research-grade database sourced from GBIF. Images are distributed across eight classes (Bees, Lepidoptera, Flies, Beetles, Wasps, Bugs, Ants, & Spiders) representing different common taxa observed at flowers and weighted according to frequency of visit and importance. Bees and Lepidoptera are weighted heaviest and spiders least. Several different architectures of the YOLO object detector infrastructure will be tested. Preliminary results show that this architecture will be useful for monitoring of pollinators in the field

Revealing community cultural wealth through counterstories: a narrative analysis of first-generation mujeres in a predominantly white-serving institution

Doctor of EducationDepartment of Curriculum and InstructionSpencer ClarkUtilizing a Critical Race Theory foundation, a Latino Critical Race Theory focus, and a Community Cultural Wealth lens, this assets-based qualitative study examined the counterstories of four first-generation women (mujeres) attending a predominantly white-serving institution in the Midwest. The increasing number of first-generation students pursuing higher education provides an opportunity to assess systems in place for recruiting, retaining, and serving first-generation students. This study presents the need to shift from a deficit perspective when working with first-generation students to an assets-based perspective that centers and values the voices of historically-excluded students, seeing the importance of their experiential knowledge. Interviews and journal entries were used to collect counterstories that focused on the six forms of capital outlined in community cultural wealth: aspirational capital (hopes and dreams), linguistic capital (intellectual and social skills), familial capital (cultural knowledge), social capital (networks of people and community resources), navigational capital (maneuvering through social institutions), and resistant capital (knowledge and skills forged through oppositional behavior). The data collected supported the six priori themes based on the six forms of capital in community cultural wealth, additional themes identified supported the link between representation and validation of historically-excluded populations as a path towards graduation

Analyzing Isolates of Fusarium Head Blight in Wheat Across Kansas

One of the big threats to wheat farmers in Kansas is Fusarium Head Blight (FHB). This disease infects wheat heads, reducing the yield of the plant and releasing deoxynivalenol, a toxin that causes vomit sickness in humans and animals. This toxin is heavily regulated by the FDA making the sale of wheat seed infected with FHB nearly impossible and reducing the profit of that season. Preventing FHB in the field is difficult because wheat is only susceptible at heading, which makes the timing of fungicide application critical.. Research and communication between producers, breeders, and researchers attempt to find better ways of managing FHB. This project has collected samples of infected wheat heads from across Kansas from several different counties with the help of Kansas wheat breeders, Extension specialists, agents, ag industry professionals, and producers. Infected wheat heads are sterilized and the fungus is isolated. Fungal cultures underwent single-sporing to confirm a pure isolate. Then DNA is extracted and sequenced. This confirms that the fungus associated with the wheat head is Fusarium and what species. This process is done in hopes of different strains and a pattern in those differences across KS counties to develop more targeted methods of dealing with Fusarium Head Blight. This includes using these isolates in screening nurseries. This collaborative effort aims to help farmers respond more effectively to infection in the field and protect their crop and profit

Teaching With Data in the Social Sciences at Kansas State University: How Can K-State Libraries Support Undergraduate Instruction?

K-State Libraries established a local research team to partner with Ithaka S+R on their multi-institutional study on teaching with data in the social sciences. The project was developed to gather information about how undergraduate instructors in the social sciences taught with and about quantitative data. The team hoped to establish baseline knowledge of faculty needs when teaching with data in order to inform our development of research data services. While this report focused on our institution, we hope the recommendations will be useful for librarians at other institutions as well. A previous version of this work had been made available in September 2021

Hydrogel interfaces for applications in microbial biotechnology

Doctor of PhilosophyDepartment of Chemical EngineeringRyan R. HansenHydrogels are three-dimensional, water-swollen, highly crosslinked polymers that can be designed to provide biocompatible and biofunctional interfaces for cells and biomolecules. With facile fabrication and precise control over chemistry, pore size, and mechanical properties, hydrogels have been studied extensively in various areas of biomedical and bioengineering, particularly in drug delivery and tissue engineering applications. However, hydrogels have not been well-studied or well-applied to many emerging applications in microbiology. This thesis explores two new applications involving hydrogel interfaces: (1) photodegradable hydrogels for high-throughput screening and isolation of rare bacteria and (2) hydrogels for protection of electroactive biofilms from environmental shocks in microbial electrolysis cell systems. The initial portion of this thesis focuses on the use of photodegradable hydrogels for microbial cell screening and rare cell isolation. The photodegradable hydrogel used here was formed with polyethylene glycol (PEG) o-nitrobenzyl acrylate and PEG-tetrathiol macromers, which form three-dimensional hydrogels through thiol-acrylate addition reactions to encapsulate heterogenous populations of bacterial cells. The individual entrapped cells can be cultured into clonal microcolonies due to the suitable hydrogel mesh size for nutrient transport to the cells. Cells are monitored en masse and rare cells showing unique growth phenotypes are identified and extracted from the hydrogel interface using a high-resolution light patterning tool. The optimum experimental setup for achieving high throughput observation and clean extraction was developed. Release kinetics with light dose, the effect of light pattern on cell morphology, and the DNA quality of the extracted cells after exposure to 365 nm light patterns was also investigated. We demonstrated the use of this approach as a screening interface by rapidly screening a mutant library of the Gram-negative bacteria Agrobacterium tumefaciens to identify, isolate, and genetically characterize strains with rare growth profiles. The reported method offers an inexpensive and practical approach to cell screening and cell sorting and can be applied to a wide range of applications where isolating phenotypically pure cells from complex, heterogenous mixtures is essential. This includes applications in microbiology, microbial therapeutics, and biomedical diagnostics. The next section of this thesis focuses on developing PEG-based hydrogels that are designed to protect electroactive biofilms from harsh environmental stressors. The coating was fabricated using PEG-tetrathiol and PEG-divinyl sulfone macromers that form hydrogels with crosslinks resistant to degradation from acid or base hydrolysis, while still promoting nutrient diffusion and electron transport. Methods of fabricating anodes containing electroactive biofilms with the hydrogels are first reported, followed by investigation of the hydrolytic stability of the coatings. Transport of a carbon source (acetate) through the coating is then modeled, and the long-term stability and compatibility of the coating over the biofilm is investigated. Lastly, the effect of the coating on the biofilm recovery from an environmental shock (ammonium exposure) is demonstrated to emphasize the potential benefit of the coating. Finally, the future directions of hydrogels in these applications are recommended, which include discussion on developing a hydrogel chemistry that is degradable on exposure to a near-infrared (NIR) light source as well as discussion on chemical and biological hydrogel additives that will improve its performance

Bibliotherapy in the Elementary Classroom: Using Literature to Navigate Trauma

Suzanne PorathThe positive impacts of reading come together in a litany of benefits one cannot ignore: reduce stress levels, improve analytical thinking, enhance memory, expands intelligence, bolster vocabulary, strengthen writing skills, and many more. But what about the advantages on an individual’s overall mental wellness that may come from reading? Officially defined by the American Library Association in 1966, bibliotherapy is the use of books in the purpose of healing, flowing in the vein of creative arts therapy. Bibliotherapy uses an individual's relationship or connection to the content of a book to help address trauma, hardships, or mental disorders. Using books in bibliotherapy can open up a Children are not immune to traumatic life events. From divorce to loss of a loved one, young individuals may have difficulty navigating the breadth of emotions saddled with such negative instances. Bibliotherapy is yet another benefit of reading that may set students up for success academically, socially, emotionally, and developmentally. This literary review outlines the history of bibliotherapy, scholarly articles delineating the implementation of bibliotherapy at an elementary level, as well as my conclusive thoughts on using literature to comprehend life events and their inevitable impact. By exploring these academic avenues, I hope to be able to create a better sense of understanding how I may use bibliotherapy in my own classroom to teach and help students who have experienced hardships in their young lives, applying this information beyond my written work and in my professional career as an elementary educator