The Invisible Influence: How Women and Enslaved People Shaped Colonial South Carolina

Colonial American studies often focus on the movements, actions and influences of white males and while their actions are significant to understanding the past, it leads to a one-sided view of history. In the colony of South Carolina, women and people of color were important figures that influenced society and made a lasting impact for future generations. Ann Drayton and Eliza Lucas Pinckney both became female planters in the absence of male figures in their life and thrived in their roles. Drayton and Lucas-Pinckney were legitimate agents of colonization and slavery. Quash/John Williams, who was a former slave of Eliza Lucas, showed that enslaved people affected society economically through their agricultural knowledge and skilled labors. His life also showed that enslaved people affected the laws and customs of colonial society through their resistance and rebellion. These two women and one man, as individuals, influenced society and contributed to the evolution of an emerging colonial power that made South Carolina the wealthiest colony in mainland British America. Their stories are unique and an intimate look into their lives reveal that women, enslaved and free Black people played a significant role in colonial society

Influence of environmental conditions on fatty acid-induced changes in Vibrio cholerae persistence and pathogenicity

Vibrio cholerae, a Gram-negative bacterium, is responsible for the acute intestinal infection known as cholera. This illness is due in part to V. cholerae’s ability to sense and adapt to changing environments as it is ingested into the human body from brackish environments. It was shown in recent studies that this bacteria has the ability to uptake exogenous fatty acids, resulting in changes to V. cholerae persistence and pathogenicity. The aim of this research is to determine the extent to which these additional exogenous UFAs influence the persistence and pathogenicity of V. cholerae throughout its transitional period from brackish environments to human host conditions. Our hypothesis is that environmental conditions (e.g., temperature, pH, salinity) direct fatty acid-induced changes in V. cholerae’s capacity to spread disease by triggering changes in the bacterium’s virulence factors such as: biofilm formation, antibiotic resistance, and cholera toxin production. Initial work focused on identifying the environmental conditions that trigger fatty acid-induced changes in V. cholerae persistence and pathogenicity using a design of experiments approach. The final work of this project focused on literary analysis of effect of the exogenous fatty acids on V. cholerae’s genetic regulatory pathways

Enantioselective Thiourea-Catalyzed Additions to Oxocarbenium Ions

Asymmetric, catalytic reactions of oxocarbenium ions are reported. Simple, chiral urea and thiourea derivatives are shown to catalyze the enantioselective substitution of silyl ketene acetals onto 1-chloroisochromans. A mechanism involving anion binding by the chiral catalyst to generate a reactive oxocarbenium ion is invoked. Catalysts bearing tertiary benzylic amide groups afforded highest enantioselectivities, with the optimal structure being derived from enantioenriched 2-arylpyrrolidine derivatives

Discrete Object Generation with Reversible Inductive Construction

The success of generative modeling in continuous domains has led to a surge of interest in generating discrete data such as molecules, source code, and graphs. However, construction histories for these discrete objects are typically not unique and so generative models must reason about intractably large spaces in order to learn. Additionally, structured discrete domains are often characterized by strict constraints on what constitutes a valid object and generative models must respect these requirements in order to produce useful novel samples. Here, we present a generative model for discrete objects employing a Markov chain where transitions are restricted to a set of local operations that preserve validity. Building off of generative interpretations of denoising autoencoders, the Markov chain alternates between producing 1) a sequence of corrupted objects that are valid but not from the data distribution, and 2) a learned reconstruction distribution that attempts to fix the corruptions while also preserving validity. This approach constrains the generative model to only produce valid objects, requires the learner to only discover local modifications to the objects, and avoids marginalization over an unknown and potentially large space of construction histories. We evaluate the proposed approach on two highly structured discrete domains, molecules and Laman graphs, and find that it compares favorably to alternative methods at capturing distributional statistics for a host of semantically relevant metrics

Direct Use of Carboxylic Acids in the Photocatalytic Hydroacylation of Styrenes To Generate Dialkyl Ketones

A general protocol for the hydroacylation of styrenes from aliphatic carboxylic acids is reported. These reactions proceed via β-scission of a phosphoranyl radical that is accessed by photoredox catalysis, followed by addition of the resulting acyl radical to the styrenyl olefin. We show that phosphine tunability is critical for efficient intermolecular coupling due to competitive quenching of the photocatalyst by the olefin. Primary, secondary, and structurally rigid tertiary carboxylic acids all generate valuable unsymmetrical dialkyl ketones

An Introduction To Marine Invasive Species

Countless marine species are invading new environments with devastating effects on the ecosystem, the local and global economy, and on human health. The frequency of marine invasions has been increasing in recent decades with a respective raised interest of invasive species in the scientific community, and the general public. The Aquatic Invasive Species class (MAR442) at the University of New England offers an informative overview of invasive species, targeting educated readers with a general interest in invasive species biology. Students in the MAR 442 class have worked on identifying the most important topics on marine invasive species, have reviewed the respective literature and written chapters that provide both a broad overview of the general aspects on marine invasions, as well as a set of individual case studies that illustrate different specific aspects of marine invasions. The class, comprised of fifteen junior and senior marine biology students, selected the different topics, presented the material, wrote the drafts, edited the drafts and assembled the final versions into this book. With a wealth of information on invasive species assembled in peer-reviewed articles, books, other literature, websites, data-bases and more, this book cannot claim to be all inclusive. However, we think that this book will provide an excellent broad overview of the most important aspects of marine invasion biology, and will furthermore provide very specific information on selected topics.https://dune.une.edu/marinesci_studproj/1000/thumbnail.jp

Oropharyngeal Microbiome Profiled at Admission is Predictive of the Need for Respiratory Support Among COVID-19 Patients [preprint]

The clinical course of infection due to respiratory viruses such as Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV2), the causative agent of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) is thought to be influenced by the community of organisms that colonizes the upper respiratory tract, the oropharyngeal microbiome. In this study, we examined the oropharyngeal microbiome of suspected COVID-19 patients presenting to the Emergency Department and an inpatient COVID-19 unit with symptoms of acute COVID-19. Of 115 enrolled patients, 74 were confirmed COVID-19+ and 50 had symptom duration of 14 days or less; 38 acute COVID-19+ patients (76%) went on to require respiratory support. Although no microbiome features were found to be significantly different between COVID-19+ and COVID-19-patients, when we conducted random forest classification modeling (RFC) to predict the need of respiratory support for the COVID-19+ patients our analysis identified a subset of organisms and metabolic pathways whose relative abundance, when combined with clinical factors (such as age and Body Mass Index), was highly predictive of the need for respiratory support (F1 score 0.857). Microbiome Multivariable Association with Linear Models (MaAsLin2) analysis was then applied to the features identified as predicative of the need for respiratory support by the RFC. This analysis revealed reduced abundance of Prevotella salivae and metabolic pathways associated with lipopolysaccharide and mycolic acid biosynthesis to be the strongest predictors of patients requiring respiratory support. These findings suggest that composition of the oropharyngeal microbiome in COVID-19 may play a role in determining who will suffer from severe disease manifestations. Importance: The microbial community that colonizes the upper airway, the oropharyngeal microbiome, has the potential to affect how patients respond to respiratory viruses such as SARS-CoV2, the causative agent of COVID-19. In this study, we investigated the oropharyngeal microbiome of COVID-19 patients using high throughput DNA sequencing performed on oral swabs. We combined patient characteristics available at intake such as medical comorbidities and age, with measured abundance of bacterial species and metabolic pathways and then trained a machine learning model to determine what features are predicative of patients needing respiratory support in the form of supplemental oxygen or mechanical ventilation. We found that decreased abundance of some bacterial species and increased abundance of pathways associated bacterial products biosynthesis was highly predictive of needing respiratory support. This suggests that the oropharyngeal microbiome affects disease course in COVID-19 and could be targeted for diagnostic purposes to determine who may need oxygen, or therapeutic purposes such as probiotics to prevent severe COVID-19 disease manifestations

Advancing the Scientific Frontier with Increasingly Autonomous Systems

A close partnership between people and partially autonomous machines has enabled decades of space exploration. But to further expand our horizons, our systems must become more capable. Increasing the nature and degree of autonomy - allowing our systems to make and act on their own decisions as directed by mission teams - enables new science capabilities and enhances science return. The 2011 Planetary Science Decadal Survey (PSDS) and on-going pre-Decadal mission studies have identified increased autonomy as a core technology required for future missions. However, even as scientific discovery has necessitated the development of autonomous systems and past flight demonstrations have been successful, institutional barriers have limited its maturation and infusion on existing planetary missions. Consequently, the authors and endorsers of this paper recommend that new programmatic pathways be developed to infuse autonomy, infrastructure for support autonomous systems be invested in, new practices be adopted, and the cost-saving value of autonomy for operations be studied.Comment: 10 pages (compared to 8 submitted to PSADS), 2 figures, submitted to National Academy of Sciences Planetary Science and Astrobiology Decadal Survey 2023-203

The Intestinal and Oral Microbiomes Are Robust Predictors of COVID-19 Severity the Main Predictor of COVID-19-related Fatality [preprint]

The reason for the striking differences in clinical outcomes of SARS-CoV-2 infected patients is still poorly understood. While most recover, a subset of people become critically ill and succumb to the disease. Thus, identification of biomarkers that can predict the clinical outcomes of COVID-19 disease is key to help prioritize patients needing urgent treatment. Given that an unbalanced gut microbiome is a reflection of poor health, we aim to identify indicator species that could predict COVID-19 disease clinical outcomes. Here, for the first time and with the largest COVID-19 patient cohort reported for microbiome studies, we demonstrated that the intestinal and oral microbiome make-up predicts respectively with 92% and 84% accuracy (Area Under the Curve or AUC) severe COVID-19 respiratory symptoms that lead to death. The accuracy of the microbiome prediction of COVID-19 severity was found to be far superior to that from training similar models using information from comorbidities often adopted to triage patients in the clinic (77% AUC). Additionally, by combining symptoms, comorbidities, and the intestinal microbiota the model reached the highest AUC at 96%. Remarkably the model training on the stool microbiome found enrichment of Enterococcus faecalis, a known pathobiont, as the top predictor of COVID-19 disease severity. Enterococcus faecalis is already easily cultivable in clinical laboratories, as such we urge the medical community to include this bacterium as a robust predictor of COVID-19 severity when assessing risk stratification of patients in the clinic

Metabolic synergies in the biotransformation of organic and metallic toxic compounds by a saprotrophic soil fungus

The saprotrophic fungus Penicillium griseofulvum was chosen as model organism to study responses to a mixture of hexachlorocyclohexane (HCH) isomers (α-HCH, β-HCH, γ-HCH, δ-HCH) and of potentially toxic metals (vanadium, lead) in solid and liquid media. The P. griseofulvum FBL 500 strain was isolated from polluted soil containing high concentrations of HCH isomers and potentially toxic elements (Pb, V). Experiments were performed in order to analyse the tolerance/resistance of this fungus to xenobiotics, and to shed further light on fungal potential in inorganic and organic biotransformations. The aim was to examine the ecological and bioremedial potential of this fungus verifying the presence of mechanisms that allow it to transform HCH isomers and metals under different, extreme, test conditions. To our knowledge, this work is the first to provide evidence on the biotransformation of HCH mixtures, in combination with toxic metals, by a saprotrophic non-white-rot fungus and on the metabolic synergies involved