Discovering and Assessing Desired Student Financial Services at East Tennessee State University.

The purpose of this study was to discover and assess student financial services delivered to students enrolled at East Tennessee State University. The research was undertaken for institutional self-improvement. The research explored changes that have occurred in student financial services in the dynamic higher education market. The research revealed universities pursued best practices for the delivery of student financial services through expanded employee knowledge, restructured organizations, and integrated information technologies. The research was conducted during October and November, 2006. The data were gathered from an online student survey of student financial services. The areas researched included: the Bursar office, the Financial Aid office, and online services. The results of the data analysis revealed problems with the students\u27 perceived quality of existing financial services and the additional services students desire. The research focused on student perceptions of the quality of financial services by age and gender classifications and response categories. Although no statistically significant difference was found between the age-gender classifications on the perception of the quality of the financial services studied, the research adds to our understanding of student financial services at East Tennessee State University. Recommendation for continued research included annual surveys of segmented student populations that include ethnicity, age, gender, and educational level. The research would be used for continuous improvement efforts and student relationship management. Also additional research was recommended for employee learning in relation to the institution\u27s mission, goals, and values

Investigation of the vasorelaxant properties of Nitroxyl during altered glycaemic conditions

Nitroxyl (HNO) is currently a vasorelaxant of high interest, but as yet its mechanisms of action have not been fully elucidated. It is thought that HNO acts on KV channels to mediate vasorelaxation, and this has been shown in previous studies (Irvine et al, 2003; Favarolo & Kemp-Harper, 2009; Yuill et al, 2011). It has also been shown that high levels of glucose inhibit KV channels (Rainbow et al, 2006) so would inhibit HNO mediated relaxation. This study could provide further evidence of KV involvement of HNO mediated vasodilation. This study uses a temperature controlled organ bath with aortic ring preparations obtained from male Wistar rats, which were killed using approved schedule 1 methods. The section of aorta was connected to an isometric transducer linked to LabChart software. This was used to measure changes in tension in response to the addition of increasing concentrations of sodium nitroprusside (SNP) and Angeli’s salt. These tension changes were quantified and converted to percentage of total relaxation, and presented graphically. The results show that greater relaxation is achieved with Angeli’s salt at high concentrations (>1μM) under normal levels of glucose then under elevated levels of glucose, in both experiments with and without the HNO scavenger L-Cysteine. The lowest level of relaxation achieved was with Angeli’s salt with hydroxocobalamin (HxC) with high levels of glucose present. These results would appear to show that high glucose has the ability to inhibit HNO mediated relaxation. This would further indicate that KV channels are involved in vasorelaxation by HNO, which concurs with data from earlier studies (Irvine et al, 2003; Favarolo & Kemp-Harper, 2009; Yuill et al, 2011; Rainbow et al, 2006)

Effect of hydration therapy on oligohydramnios

Background: Oligamnios is defined as an AFI 34 weeks with AFI <5 cms were randomised into an Intervention group who receive 1 litre of ringer lactate i.v given daily for 5 days and nonintervention group who were kept under observation by serial ultrasound and antepartum fetal surveillance. All were followed-up till delivery to obtain maternal and perinatal outcomes.Results: Among the 68 who were given intervention, 61 responded and 7 were non responders. With hydration therapy, mean increase in AFI was 4 cm and minimum duration needed for improvement was one week. Hydration therapy showed significant improvement in the maternal and fetal outcomes. Intravenous route of maternal hydration has the advantage that a fixed amount of fluid can be infused at a relatively constant rate with ensured compliance.Conclusions: From the study, it was concluded that Hydration therapy is an excellent method to improve AFI in Oligohydramnios and maternal and perinatal outcome

Examining the Effectiveness of Marketing Practices of a Nonprofit Institution of Higher Education: Internal Service Provider

Abstract - Quality education is the sum of Institutions of Higher Education’s (IHE) parts, including classroom instruction and internal services, that are key to a student’s success during and after college. The purpose of this study is to address an understudied sector in the nonprofit marketing literature (i.e., Institutions of Higher Education internal service providers). The current study extends Dakouan et al. (2019) work by examining the marketing efforts of an IHE’s career services center’s effectiveness in creating awareness and increasing attendance at career events. The study focuses on outbound marketing strategies addressing the research question “to what extent are outbound marketing strategies successful in creating awareness and increasing attendance at IHE’s career fairs?” Data were collected over three academic years through an intercept survey provided at career fairs and through a database of social media and digital marketing analytics at a medium-sized university located in the Southeastern United States. Frequency analyses were used to determine the effectiveness of marketing strategies in bringing awareness and increasing attendance to IHE career fairs. Further, attendance data were compared between results of frequency analyses of outbound marketing strategies. The findings revealed that only two effective forms of outbound communications used by the subject IHE’s career center were personal selling by faculty and email blast. Findings also revealed that social and internet marketing strategies used by the subject IHE career center were not effective. The results have implications as to a need for continual marketing research of trends in marketing best practices. The findings demonstrated the need for adding inbound marketing strategies(Dakouan et al., 2019) and hiring and/or training staff in marketing research, social media, and internet marketing skills. From the study’s findings, it was concluded that Filip’s(2012) study was supported. Thus, to create awareness and increase attendance at events provided by an IHE’s internal services providers, strategically applied marketing best practices are necessary

Altered Innate and Lymphocytic Immune Responses in Mouse Splenocytes Post-Flight

Space flight is known to affect immune responses of astronauts and animals, decreasing lymphocytic responses to mitogenic stimuli, delayed typed hypersensitivity reactions, and T-cell activation. Despite changes in immune suppression, there are no reports of consistent adverse clinical events post flight. To further investigate the spectrum of affected immune responses, murine splenocytes were stimulated immediately post-shuttle flight (14 days on STS-135) with T-cell stimulators or toll-like receptor agonists. Comparisons were made to ground control splenocytes from age-matched mice. Cell phenotypes were assessed, as well as activation markers and associated cytokine production. The CD4+ population decreased with no concurrent decrease in CD8+ cells from shuttle mice post flight compared to ground controls. Regarding antigen presenting cell populations, the number of CD11c+ cells were slightly elevated post flight, compared to ground controls, with increased MHC Class I expression (I-A(sup b)) and no change in Class II expression (H-2K(sup b)). CD86+ populations were also significantly diminished. However, the decreased markers did not correlate with activity. Stimulation of splenocytes post flight showed significant increase in bead uptake, increased Class I expression, increased TNF-alpha and IL-6 production in response to TLR-2 (zymosan) and TLR-4 (LPS) agonists. While most activated (ConA or anti-CD3/anti-CD28) CD4+ cells showed markedly diminished responses (reduced IL-2 production), non-specific T cell responses to superantigen (SEA/SEB) increased post flight as determined by expression of early activation markers. Production of additional cytokines was also dysregulated postflight. Overall, persistent immune changes during space flight could represent unique clinical risks for exploration class missions. The consequences of pathogenic encounter remain an important concern that should be addressed

ACES: Analysis of Conservation with an Extensive list of Species

MOTIVATION: An abundance of new reference genomes is becoming available through large-scale sequencing efforts. While the reference FASTA for each genome is available, there is currently no automated mechanism to query a specific sequence across all new reference genomes. RESULTS: We developed ACES (Analysis of Conservation with an Extensive list of Species) as a computational workflow to query specific sequences of interest (e.g., enhancers, promoters, exons) against reference genomes with an available reference FASTA. This automated workflow generates BLAST hits against each of the reference genomes, a multiple sequence alignment file, a graphical fragment assembly file, and a phylogenetic tree file. These data files can then be used by the researcher in several ways to provide key insights into conservation of the query sequence. AVAILABILITY: ACES is available at https://github.com/TNTurnerLab/ACES. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: Supplementary Figure 1 is available online in Bioinformatics

The Stability Balloon for Two-dimensional Vortex Ripple Patterns

Patterns of vortex ripples form when a sand bed is subjected to an oscillatory fluid flow. Here we describe experiments on the response of regular vortex ripple patterns to sudden changes of the driving amplitude a or frequency f. A sufficient decrease of f leads to a "freezing" of the pattern, while a sufficient increase of f leads to a supercritical secondary "pearling" instability. Sufficient changes in the amplitude a lead to subcritical secondary "doubling" and "bulging" instabilities. Our findings are summarized in a "stability balloon" for vortex ripple pattern formation.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figure

Altered Innate and Lymphocytic Immunity in Murine Splenocytes Following Short-Duration Spaceflight

Immune dysregulation has been demonstrated following spaceflight of varying durations and limited in-flight studies indicate this phenomenon may persist during spaceflight. Causes may include microgravity, physiological stress, isolation, confinement and disrupted circadian rhythms. To further investigate the mechanisms associated with flight-associated immune changes, murine splenocytes immune parameters were assessed following 14 day space flight on Space Shuttle mission STS-135

Altered TNF-Alpha, Glucose, Insulin and Amino Acids in Islets Langerhans Cultured in a Microgravity Model System

The present studies were designed to determine effects of a microgravity model system upon lipopolysaccharide (LPS) stimulated tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNF-alpha) activity and indices of insulin and fuel homeostasis of pancreatic islets of Langerhans. Islets (1726+/-1 17,150 u IEU) from Wistar Furth rats were treated as: 1) HARV (High Aspect Ratio Vessel cell culture) , 2) HARV plus LPS, 3) static culture, 4) static culture plus LPS. TNF-alpha (L929 cytotoxicity assay) was significantly increased in LPS-induced HARV and static cultures, yet the increase was more pronounced in the static culture group (p<0.05). A decrease in insulin concentration was demonstrated in the LPS stimulated HARV culture (p<0.05). We observed a greater glucose concentration and increased disappearance of arginine in islets cultured in HARVs. While nitrogenous compound analysis indicated a ubiquitous reliance upon glutamine in all experimental groups, arginine was converted to ornithine at a two-fold greater rate in the islets cultured in the HARV microgravity model system (p<0.05). These studies demonstrate alterations in LPS induced TNF-alpha production of pancreatic islets of Langerhans, favoring a lesser TNF activity in the HARV. These alterations in fuel homeostasis may be promulgated by gravity averaged cell culture methods or by three dimensional cell assembly

The ESA-NASA CHOICE Study: Winterover at Concordia Station, Interior Antarctica, A Potential Analog for Spaceflight-Associated Immune Dysregulation

For ground-based space physiological research, the choice of terrestrial analog must carefully match the system of interest. Antarctica winter-over at the European Concordia Station is potentially a superior ground-analog for spaceflight-associated immune dysregulation (SAID). Concordia missions consist of prolonged durations in an extreme/dangerous environment, station-based habitation, isolation, disrupted circadian rhythms and international crews. The ESA-NASA CHOICE study assesses innate and adaptive immunity, viral reactivation and stress factors during Concordia winterover deployment. Initial data obtained from the first study deployment (2009 mission; 'n' of 6) will be presented, and logistical challenges regarding analog usage for biological studies will also be discussed. The total WBC increased, and alterations in some peripheral leukocyte populations were observed during winterover at Concordia Station. Percentages of lymphocytes and monocytes increased, and levels of senescent CD8+ T cells were increased during deployment. Transient increases in constitutively activated T cell subsets were observed, at mission time points associated with endemic disease outbreaks. T cell function (early blastogenesis response) was increased near the entry/exit deployment phases, and production of most measured cytokines increased during deployment. Salivary cortisol demonstrated high variability during winterover, but was generally increased. A 2-point circadian rhythm of cortisol measurement (morning/evening) was unaltered during winterover. Perceived stress was mildly elevated during winterover. Other measures, including in-vitro DTH assessment, viral specific T cell number/function and latent herpesvirus reactivation have not yet been completed for the 2009 winterover subjects. Based on the preliminary data, alterations in immune cell distribution and function appear to persist during Antarctic winterover at Concordia Station. Some of these changes are similar to those observed in Astronauts, either during or immediately following spaceflight. Based on the initial immune data and environmental conditions, Concordia winterover may be an appropriate analog for some flight-associated immune changes