The Abominable Mystery of the First Flowers: Clues from Nebraska and Kansas

The plant fossils found in shales and sandstones of the late Cretaceous age Dakota Group in Nebraska and Kansas figure prominently in the drama tis plantae of the long-running and still unsolved mystery of the origin of flowering plants (angiosperms). This mystery has many fans because almost all of the plants that humans depend on for food and shelter are angiosperms; half of the calories in the world\u27s diet come from the grass family alone. The Dakota fossils were discovered by western science more than one hundred years ago during the early stages of geological exploration of the western territories. The discovery of 100 million year old, late-Cretaceous leaves that had the shapes, sizes, and outlines of modern trees such as sassafras (Sassafras), magnolia (Magnolia), rubber tree (Ficus), and willow (Salix) astounded nineteenth century scientists. Although they had some reservations about the identifications, these early paleobotanists assigned many of the leaves to modern genera. These almost modern flowering plant leaves seemed to appear suddenly in the mid-Cretaceous and, with amazing geological rapidity (10 - 20 million years), preempted the leading role in the world\u27s flora. All reports of flowering plant fossils at or before the beginning of the Cretaceous, 138 million years ago, are doubtful. However, by the end of the Cretaceous, 9 out of every 10 vascular plants were angiosperms. (Now there are 250 species of flowering plants for every species of gymnosperm.) There was no geological warning of this change in the cast of vegetational players, no prominent understudy (or understory) roles that signaled that flowering plants were to be the stars of the future. These upstarts replaced the cast of conifers, ginkgoes, seed ferns, cycads, cycadeoids (all gymnosperms), and ferns that had composed the floristic company for the previous 150 million years. Charles Darwin called the questions of when and where flowering plants arose and why and how they so quickly stole the limelight in the plant part of the evolutionary stage an abominable mystery . The leaf fossils of the Dakota Group in Nebraska and Kansas figured prominently in this mystery because they provided one of the oldest records of a flora in which flowering plants out-numbered the ferns, conifers, and cycads

OER+ScholComm Summer 2023

OER + ScholComm is an IMLS-funded collaboration to research the ideal components of and develop a corpus of open educational resources that supports formal and continuing education preparing librarians to work in and advocate for change in the scholarly communication landscape.This report provides background and present status on a collaboration that has resulted in an open textbook and a corpus of additional open teaching and learning materials scoped to scholarly communication topics. It concludes with next steps, calls to action, and our appreciation for everyone who supported us and partnered with us to do this work

Finding Our Way: A Snapshot of Scholarly Communication Practitioners' Duties & Training

INTRODUCTION: Scholarly communication has arisen as a core academic librarianship competency, but formal training on scholarly communication topics in LIS is rare, leaving many early career practitioners underprepared for their work. METHODS: Researchers surveyed practitioners of scholarly communication, as defined by the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL), regarding their attitudes toward and experiences with education in scholarly communication, job responsibilities, location within their academic libraries, and thoughts about emerging trends in scholarly communication librarianship. results Few scholarly communication practitioners felt well-prepared by their graduate training for the core set of primary and secondary scholarly communication responsibilities that have emerged. They deploy a range of strategies to fill the gap and would benefit from support in this area, from more robust education in graduate programs and through continued professional development. discussion The results of this survey support the assertion that as academic libraries and academic library work have increasingly recognized the importance of scholarly communication topics, library school curricula have not developed correspondingly. Respondents indicated a low level of formal pedagogy on scholarly communication topics and generally felt they were not well-prepared for scholarly communication work, coming at a significant opportunity cost. CONCLUSION: Scholarly communication practitioners should create and curate open teaching and learning content on scholarly communication topics for both continuing education as well as adoption within LIS curricula, and LIS programs should develop accordingly, either through “topics” courses or by integrating scholarly communication into and across curricula as it intersects with existing courses

Expanding Scholarly Communication Instruction for the Next Generation of LIS Leaders

This Works in Progress poster was presented at the 2018 ALISE Conference in Denver, CO on February 6, 2018. It provides a short introduction to our research on stakeholder perceptions of scholarly communication librarianship instruction in LIS programs. We describe the growth of scholarly communication librarianship as a field, the lack of instruction in LIS programs to support that growth, and the potential use of open educational resources in LIS programs. Links to surveys for LIS instructors are included.Anyone who keeps an eye on job openings in academic libraries will have noticed the growing demand for library support for scholarly communication, the communication that is at the very core of the scholarly purpose. Professional education for librarians is only starting to catch up with the interest in the field. While scholarly communication is increasingly recognized as a core competency for librarianship, educational resources for training and continuing education are currently lacking in this area. In this IMLS-funded research (LG-72-17-0132-17), we are designing and conducting a nationwide survey and workshop to engage with central stakeholder groups: library school instructors, scholarly communication experts and early career professionals with scholarly communication responsibilities. Through these activities, the researchers will come to understand what is required of an Open Educational Resource focused on scholarly communication, how such an OER might work, possible obstacles to its adoption, and partnerships and promotions that could help in its success. Our project is designed to inform and accelerate the attention devoted to scholarly communication in both LIS and continuing professional education.Institute for Museum and Library Service

Evaluation of Riparian Tree Cover and Shading in the Chauga River Watershed Using LiDAR and Deep Learning Land Cover Classification

River systems face negative impacts from development and removal of riparian vegetation that provide critical shading in the face of climate change. This study used supervised deep learning to accurately classify the land cover, including shading, of the Chauga River watershed, located in Oconee County, South Carolina, for 2011 and 2019. The study examined the land cover differences along the Chauga River and its tributaries, inside and outside the Sumter National Forest. LiDAR data were incorporated in solar radiation calculations for the Chauga River inside and outside the National Forest. The deep learning classifications produced land cover maps with high overall accuracy (97.09% for 2011; 97.58% for 2019). The most significant difference in land cover was in tree cover in the 50 m buffer of the tributaries inside the National Forest compared to the tributaries outside the National Forest (2011: 95.39% vs. 81.84%, 2019: 92.86% vs. 82.06%). The solar radiation calculations also confirmed a difference between the area inside and outside the National Forest, with the mean temperature being greater outside the protected area (outside: 455.845 WH/m2; inside: 416,770 WH/m2). This study suggests that anthropogenic influence in the Chauga River watershed is greater in the areas outside the Sumter National Forest, which could cause damage to the river ecosystem if left unchecked in the future as development pressures increase. This study demonstrates the accurate application of deep learning for high-resolution classification of river shading combined with the use of LiDAR data to estimate solar radiation reaching the Chauga River. Techniques to monitor riparian zones and shading at high spatial resolutions are critical for the mitigation of the negative impacts of warming climates on aquatic ecosystems

Cryptosporidium Priming Is More Effective than Vaccine for Protection against Cryptosporidiosis in a Murine Protein Malnutrition Model

Cryptosporidium is a major cause of severe diarrhea, especially in malnourished children. Using a murine model of C. parvum oocyst challenge that recapitulates clinical features of severe cryptosporidiosis during malnutrition, we interrogated the effect of protein malnutrition (PM) on primary and secondary responses to C. parvum challenge, and tested the differential ability of mucosal priming strategies to overcome the PM-induced susceptibility. We determined that while PM fundamentally alters systemic and mucosal primary immune responses to Cryptosporidium, priming with C. parvum (106 oocysts) provides robust protective immunity against re-challenge despite ongoing PM. C. parvum priming restores mucosal Th1-type effectors (CD3+CD8+CD103+ T-cells) and cytokines (IFNγ, and IL12p40) that otherwise decrease with ongoing PM. Vaccination strategies with Cryptosporidium antigens expressed in the S. Typhi vector 908htr, however, do not enhance Th1-type responses to C. parvum challenge during PM, even though vaccination strongly boosts immunity in challenged fully nourished hosts. Remote non-specific exposures to the attenuated S. Typhi vector alone or the TLR9 agonist CpG ODN-1668 can partially attenuate C. parvum severity during PM, but neither as effectively as viable C. parvum priming. We conclude that although PM interferes with basal and vaccine-boosted immune responses to C. parvum, sustained reductions in disease severity are possible through mucosal activators of host defenses, and specifically C. parvum priming can elicit impressively robust Th1-type protective immunity despite ongoing protein malnutrition. These findings add insight into potential correlates of Cryptosporidium immunity and future vaccine strategies in malnourished children

Virtual coatings application system

A virtual coatings application system has several features to enhance the realism of simulated spray painting. The system generally includes a display screen on which is defined a virtual surface (such as a truck door) that is intended to be virtually painted or coated by the user. Alternatively, the system includes a head-mounted display unit that displays a virtual spray painting environment in which the virtual surface is defined. The user operates an instrumented spray gun controller that outputs one or more signals representing data as to the status of the controls on the spray gun controller. The system also has a motion tracking system that tracks the position and orientation of the spray gun controller with respect to the virtual surface. Simulation software generates virtual spray pattern data in response to at least the data from the spray gun controller and the position and orientation data received from the tracking system. Virtual spray pattern images are displayed in real time on the virtual surface in accordance with the accumulation of virtual spray pattern data at each location on the virtual surface

Virtual coatings application system

A virtual coatings application system has several features to enhance the realism of simulated spray painting. The system generally includes a display screen on which is defined a virtual surface (such as a truck door) that is intended to be virtually painted or coated by the user. The user operates an instrumented spray gun controller that outputs one or more signals representing data as to the status of the controls on the spray gun controller. The system also has a motion tracking system that tracks the position and orientation of the spray gun controller with respect to the virtual surface defined on the display screen. Simulation software generates virtual spray pattern data in response to at least the data from the spray gun controller and the position and orientation data received from the tracking system. Virtual spray pattern images are displayed in real time on the display screen in accordance with the accumulation of virtual spray pattern data at each location on the virtual surface

A multi-stage genome-wide association study of bladder cancer identifies multiple susceptibility loci.

We conducted a multi-stage, genome-wide association study of bladder cancer with a primary scan of 591,637 SNPs in 3,532 affected individuals (cases) and 5,120 controls of European descent from five studies followed by a replication strategy, which included 8,382 cases and 48,275 controls from 16 studies. In a combined analysis, we identified three new regions associated with bladder cancer on chromosomes 22q13.1, 19q12 and 2q37.1: rs1014971, (P = 8 × 10⁻¹²) maps to a non-genic region of chromosome 22q13.1, rs8102137 (P = 2 × 10⁻¹¹) on 19q12 maps to CCNE1 and rs11892031 (P = 1 × 10⁻⁷) maps to the UGT1A cluster on 2q37.1. We confirmed four previously identified genome-wide associations on chromosomes 3q28, 4p16.3, 8q24.21 and 8q24.3, validated previous candidate associations for the GSTM1 deletion (P = 4 × 10⁻¹¹) and a tag SNP for NAT2 acetylation status (P = 4 × 10⁻¹¹), and found interactions with smoking in both regions. Our findings on common variants associated with bladder cancer risk should provide new insights into the mechanisms of carcinogenesis

McNair Research Journal - Summer 2015

Journal articles based on research conducted by undergraduate students in the McNair Scholars Program Table of Contents Biography of Dr. Ronald E. McNair Statements: Dr. Neal J. Smatresk, UNLV President Dr. Juanita P. Fain, Vice President of Student Affairs Dr. William W. Sullivan, Associate Vice President for Retention and Outreach Mr. Keith Rogers, Deputy Executive Director of the Center for Academic Enrichment and Outreach McNair Scholars Institute Staf