Message from the President

Newsletter published on March 10, 2017 detailing the multiple studies being undertaken by the faculty of Jiann-Ping Hsu College of Public Healthhttps://digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu/pubhlth-bee-facmedia/1037/thumbnail.jp

Radar\u27s Wild Ride

A horse trapped in a Utah canyon gets a big lift from The HSU

MODULATION OF THE CGMP-GATED CHANNEL BY CALCIUM

Calcium acting through calmodulin has been shown to regulate the affinity of cyclic nucleotide-gated channels expressed in cell lines. But is calmodulin the Ca-sensor that normally regulates these channels

College of Public Heath News

Jiann-Ping Hsu College of Public Health Establishes Development Council Georgia Southern Enlisted to Help Fight COVID-19 in Georgia’s Confinement Facilitie

Efficient single frequency fibre lasers using novel photosensitive Er/Yb optical fibres

Boron- and germanium-doped highly photosensitive cladding is used in a novel design to achieve photosensitive Er/Yb-doped fibers, permitting short, strong gratings (length ~1cm, reflectivity >99%) to be written without hydrogenation. The high absorption at 980nm in Er/Yb fibers permits efficient pump absorption over a short device length, which is ideal for achieving highly efficient single-frequency fiber lasers. Both single-frequency Bragg-grating reflector and distributed-feedback lasers with slope efficiencies of 25% with respect to launched pump power have been realized in such fibers

Economic Games Quantify Diminished Sense of Guilt in Patients with Damage to the Prefrontal Cortex

Damage to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPFC) impairs concern for other people, as reflected in the dysfunctional real-life social behavior of patients with such damage, as well as their abnormal performances on tasks ranging from moral judgment to economic games. Despite these convergent data, we lack a formal model of how, and to what degree, VMPFC lesions affect an individual's social decision-making. Here we provide a quantification of these effects using a formal economic model of choice that incorporates terms for the disutility of unequal payoffs, with parameters that index behaviors normally evoked by guilt and envy. Six patients with focal VMPFC lesions participated in a battery of economic games that measured concern about payoffs to themselves and to others: dictator, ultimatum, and trust games. We analyzed each task individually, but also derived estimates of the guilt and envy parameters from aggregate behavior across all of the tasks. Compared with control subjects, the patients donated significantly less and were less trustworthy, and overall our model found a significant insensitivity to guilt. Despite these abnormalities, the patients had normal expectations about what other people would do, and they also did not simply generate behavior that was more noisy. Instead, the findings argue for a specific insensitivity to guilt, an abnormality that we suggest characterizes a key contribution made by the VMPFC to social behavior

Synthesis of Spinel Ferrites in Radiofrequency Thermal Plasma Reactor

Formation of nanosized zinc-ferrites and nickel-zinc ferrites from iron- and zinc oxide powders and corresponding nitrate solutions, respectively, was studied in RF thermal plasma conditions. The products were characterized for chemical composition, phase conditions, particle size distribution, morphologies and saturation magnetization. Effects of synthesis conditions on properties of products were studied in details