Central Falls Welcome Sign Project

Our inspiration for this modern style welcome sign came mostly from the welcome sign for Vancouver, Canada. This approach would give Central Falls a look of it’s own among the more traditional syle signs of surrounding towns. The double paneled structure design of this option would make for the option of having a bilingual sign, showcasing the multi-cultural heritage of the City

Advisor and Student Experiences of Summer Support for College-intending, Low-income high school graduates

Summer melt occurs when students who have been accepted to college and intend to enroll fail to matriculate in college in the fall semester after high school. A high rate of summer melt contributes to the lower postsecondary attainment rates of low-income students, in particular. This article presents qualitative findings from two interventions intended to reduce summer melt among low-income, urban high school graduates who had been accepted to college and indicated their intention to enroll. Results from student and counselor surveys, interviews, and focus groups point to a web of personal and contextual factors that collectively influence students' college preparation behaviors and provide insight into the areas of summer supports from which students like these can benefit. The data fit an ecological perspective, in which personal, institutional, societal, and temporal factors interact to affect students' behaviors and outcomes. A model of summer intervention shows that obstacles in completing college financing and informational tasks can lead college-intending students to re-open the question of where or whether to attend college in the fall after high school graduation. Given the pressure of concerns about how to actualize their offer of admission, students rarely engage in the anticipatory socialization activities that might help them make optimal transitions into college

Phylogenetic Targeting of Research Effort in Evolutionary Biology

Many questions in comparative biology require that new data be collected, either to build a comparative database for the first time or to augment existing data. Given resource limitations in collecting data, the question arises as to which species should be studied to increase the size of comparative data sets. By taking hypotheses, existing data relevant to the hypotheses, and a phylogeny, we show that a method of “phylogenetic targeting” can systematically guide data collection while taking into account potentially confounding variables and competing hypotheses. Phylogenetic targeting selects potential candidates for future data collection, using a flexible scoring system based on differences in pairwise comparisons. We used simulations to assess the performance of phylogenetic targeting, as compared with the less systematic approach of randomly selecting species (as might occur when data have been collected without regard to phylogeny and variation in the traits of interest). The simulations revealed that phylogenetic targeting increased the statistical power to detect correlations and that power increased with the number of species in the tree, even when the number of species studied was held constant. We also developed a Web‐based computer program called PhyloTargeting to implement the approach (http://phylotargeting.fas.harvard.edu).Human Evolutionary Biolog

The 10kTrees Website: A New Online Resource for Primate Phylogeny

The comparative method plays a central role in efforts to uncover the adaptive basis for primate behaviors, morphological traits, and cognitive abilities.[1-4] The comparative method has been used, for example, to infer that living in a larger group selects for a larger neocortex,[5][6] that primate territoriality favors a longer day range relative to home range size,[7] and that sperm competition can account for the evolution of primate testes size.[8][9] Comparison is fundamental for reconstructing behavioral traits in the fossil record, for example, in studies of locomotion and diet.[10-13] Recent advances in comparative methods require phylogenetic information,[2][14-16] but our knowledge of phylogenetic information is imperfect. In the face of uncertainty about evolutionary relationships, which phylogeny should one use? Here we provide a new resource for comparative studies of primates that enables users to run comparative analyses on multiple primate phylogenies Importantly, the 10,000 trees that we provide are not random, but instead use recent systematic methods to create a plausible set of topologies that reflect our certainty about some nodes on the tree and uncertainty about other nodes, given the dataset. The trees also reflect uncertainty about branch lengths.Human Evolutionary Biolog

Downtown Providence Farmers Market Design

This market essentially combines a marketplace with an existing or new industrial building. The hybrid created results in space that has daily retail sales and hours, as well as other goods available at other times. The industrial aspect typically acts as the anchor, as the market’s activities help attract a different group of consumers at other business times. An example of this would be a seafood supply warehouse that also provides dining and entertainment as a nightlife destination

Engineering thermo-responsive affinity ligands for glycoprotein purification by affinity precipitation

Effective methods for isolation and purification of glycoproteins are of increasing significance to the rapidly growing biopharmaceutical and diagnostic industry. Glycoproteins represent the majority of therapeutic proteins on the market and are effectively used to treat immune disorders, infections, cancers, and other diseases. Targeting these glycoproteins is also critical to an emerging field of glycoproteomics aimed to understand structure-function relationships of glycans. Architecturally, these glycoproteins are proteins with covalently linked oligosaccharide chains of varying monosaccharide composition. Affinity chromatography has proven to be an excellent method of glycoprotein purification at the bench scale. However, chromatography in large scale production has its drawbacks. Column fowling, flowrate limitations, and diffusional constraints collectively hinder the effectiveness of the method. An alternative proposed in this dissertation is the use of affinity precipitation as a purification technique. The three main objectives are 1) develop and produce dual-functional, thermo-responsive affinity ligands from a biological host, 2) characterize and optimize the accompanying affinity precipitation method, and 3) apply the ligand and process to relevant, unmodified glycoproteins. The design of the thermo-responsive affinity construct was comprised of two main functional domains. The binding capability was achieved by selection of small ligands with affinity to a specific monosaccharide moiety. Two different lectins, or sugar binding proteins, were used in the fusion design: a fucose binding lectin from Ralstonia solanacearum, and a sialic acid binding lectin from Vibrio cholera. The thermo-responsive functionality was obtained by use of an elastin-like peptide (ELP), which confers inverse solubility relationship properties to the fusion construct. A small library of varying ELP chain lengths were designed to find the optimal size fusion for both production and function. These dual functional ligands were cloned and expressed in the microbial host, E. coli. Furthermore, secretion of these constructs was achieved by employing the Tat secretion pathway in combination with an outer membrane lipoprotein deletion mutant with a leaky periplasm phenotype. This secretory mechanism allows for easy isolation, avoidance of inclusion bodies, and no additional protease inhibitors. After successful production, the ligands were tested to confirm that dual functionality was preserved in fusion form. Once binding conditions and precipitation properties were ascertained, the purification ability was tested on model glycoproteins. Experimentation was carried out monitoring the purification yield, purity, and retained activity of the target enzymes. High contaminant solutions, such as cell lysates, were spiked with the model glycoproteins to mimic crude protein solutions. The purification ability of the constructs in these models was observed. The method was then implemented on two relevant glycoprotein applications: 1) purification of soybean peroxidase from a crude protein extract and 2) targeting the therapeutic protein erythropoietin from albumin rich, used CHO cell media. By implementation of the fucose targeting fusion construct, the unmodified soybean peroxidase is isolated from a natural crude extract from the soybean hull, a by-product of the soybean industry. The affinity precipitation method parameters were optimized with respect to ratios, temperatures, recycle, and elution buffers to achieve successful isolation of the low abundance enzyme. Under the optimized conditions, >95% recovery yield and a purification of 22.7 fold of an active, pure product was attainable. The purification of erythropoietin led to additional experimentation with high-abundant glycoprotein solutions, as well as expansion of the affinity ligand platform. The concept of multi-lectin affinity precipitation, using the fucose and sialic acid binding lection sequentially, was introduced and tested for purification capability. An industrially relevant scheme involving isolation of the erythropoietin from used CHO cell media allowed for an achievable yield of about 60%, with a resulting albumin depletion of about 85%. In addition to development of a pair of novel thermo-responsive affinity ligands for glycoprotein purification, this dissertation provides insight on possible improvements and future directions with respect to the thermo-responsive affinity ligand platform. This unique concept employs novel lectin fusions to target valuable glycoproteins using a method avoiding the major drawbacks associated with chromatography.Ph.D

Central Falls Welcome Sign Project Phase 2

For this design, the intent was to create a completely different identity for the City of Central Falls, as well as create a stronger connection with the state of Rhode Island. The curved shape that is created by the top portion of the design suggests a relationship with the Ocean State and the symbol of the wave that is seen throughout the State and even its license plate. It also creates a more modern approach with its abstract shape as well as creates a new and recognizable destination for tourists and locals. The use of brick for the base suggests that although new and different and for the future, it still holds true to the principles that make Central Falls the City it is today

Primate Extinction Risk and Historical Patterns of Speciation and Extinction in Relation to Body Mass

Body mass is thought to influence diversification rates, but previous studies have produced ambiguous results. We investigated patterns of diversification across 100 trees obtained from a new Bayesian inference of primate phylogeny that sampled trees in proportion to their posterior probabilities. First, we used simulations to assess the validity of previous studies that used linear models to investigate the links between IUCN Red List status and body mass. These analyses support the use of linear models for ordinal ranked data on threat status, and phylogenetic generalized linear models revealed a significant positive correlation between current extinction risk and body mass across our tree block. We then investigated historical patterns of speciation and extinction rates using a recently developed maximum-likelihood method. Specifically, we predicted that body mass correlates positively with extinction rate because larger bodied organisms reproduce more slowly, and body mass correlates negatively with speciation rate because smaller bodied organisms are better able to partition niche space. We failed to find evidence that extinction rates covary with body mass across primate phylogeny. Similarly, the speciation rate was generally unrelated to body mass, except in some tests that indicated an increase in the speciation rate with increasing body mass. Importantly, we discovered that our data violated a key assumption of sample randomness with respect to body mass. After correcting for this bias, we found no association between diversification rates and mass.Human Evolutionary Biolog

Mutualism or Parasitism? Using a Phylogenetic Approach to Characterize the Oxpecker-Ungulate Relationship

With their striking predilection for perching on African ungulates and eating their ticks, yellow-billed (Buphagus africanus) and red-billed oxpeckers (B. erythrorhynchus) represent one of the few potentially mutualistic relationships among vertebrates. The nature of the oxpecker–ungulate relationship remains uncertain, however, because oxpeckers are known to consume ungulate tissues, suggesting that the relationship between oxpeckers and ungulates may also be parasitic. To examine this issue further, we obtained data on oxpecker preferences for different ungulate species, the abundance of ticks on these ungulates, and ungulate hide thickness. In support of the mutualism hypothesis, we found that both species of oxpeckers prefer ungulate hosts that harbor a higher abundance of ticks. We found no evidence that hide thickness—a measure of the potential for parasitism by oxpeckers—predicts oxpecker preferences for different ungulate species. Oxpeckers also prefer larger-bodied ungulates, possibly because larger animals have more ticks, provide a more stable platform upon which to forage, or support more oxpeckers feeding simultaneously. However, the preference for ungulates with greater tick abundance was independent of host body mass. These results support the hypothesis that the relationship between oxpeckers and ungulates is primarily mutualistic.Human Evolutionary Biolog

Voice Onset Time as a Clinical Indicator of Hypofunctional Voice Disorders.

The purpose of this study was to measure and compare the voice onset times (VOTs) of healthy individuals using a normal and breathy voice in an effort to determine if VOT can be used as a noninvasive clinical indicator of laryngeal function. Recordings were made of 20 adults between the ages of 20-48 with normal laryngeal function, each using a normal (Group 1) and breathy voice (Group 2). The participants’ productions were designed and collected in such a manner to control for speaking rate, vowel context, pitch, and loudness; all of which have been shown to influence VOT. A mixed analyses of variance showed that hypofunctional productions demonstrated longer VOTs across all stop consonants when compared to normal productions. Within the stops, a significant difference between the voiced and voiceless stops was noted, although no gender differences were found. It was concluded that VOT can be used as an indirect clinical indicator of laryngeal function