Effects of a Mobile Fueling Station on Performance in Division III Soccer Players

Topics in Exercise Science and Kinesiology Volume 4: Issue 1, Article 11, 2023. This study aimed to determine if there was an ergogenic effect of utilizing a mobile fueling station in Division III soccer teams. Mobile fueling stations have been shown to be a feasible and sustainable option to support nutrition periodization in college-aged athletes. To date, no studies have analyzed the effect of these stations on athletic performance. We analyzed the effects of this fueling strategy on sprint speed, sprint count, and athlete acceptance during soccer practices and competitions. Athletes from the DeSales University Men’s and Women’s soccer teams (n=35) completed two weeks of data collection in a randomized, crossover design, with one week of fueling using the mobile fueling station (WS), and one week without fueling (NS). In the WS condition, participants ate a carbohydrate-containing snack before soccer practice or competition and ate a snack containing carbohydrates and protein after. Sprint data were collected using GPS sensors, and a post-study questionnaire evaluated athlete acceptance and perceived effectiveness. An a priori alpha level for significance was set at 0.05, and sprint data were analyzed using univariate analysis of variance. While there were no statistically significant differences (p\u3e0.05) in peak (WS=7.65 m/s, NS=7.9 m/s) and mean (WS=6.93 m/s, NS=7.01 m/s) sprint speed or maximum (WS=13, NS=12.16) and mean (WS=8.16, NS=7.46) sprint count, survey responses indicated that 100% of athletes found that mobile fueling stations improved their athletic performance and would like it to be a permanent fixture of their athletic program. These results indicate that mobile fueling stations are perceived as beneficial by Division III soccer players

Gene Gun Research Project

The motivation behind this project is to design or improve a cheaper gene gun that can help the world. The goal is to design a new low-cost gene delivery system that will allow Dr. Mahajan and University of Akron students conduct new research, with the aim of advancing society in many different fields. A few examples would be improving crops resistances to insects or harsh weather. This could happen by altering their genes to repulse insects or have stronger bases to have better resistance to the wind. In the medical world you could use gene therapy to help fight cancer or other diseases. The approach to this project is research, design and trial and error. The research will mostly be on how the gene delivery system drives DNA into cells using micro needles

Androgen drives melanoma invasiveness and metastatic spread by inducing tumorigenic fucosylation

Abstract Melanoma incidence and mortality rates are historically higher for men than women. Although emerging studies have highlighted tumorigenic roles for the male sex hormone androgen and its receptor (AR) in melanoma, cellular and molecular mechanisms underlying these sex-associated discrepancies are poorly defined. Here, we delineate a previously undisclosed mechanism by which androgen-activated AR transcriptionally upregulates fucosyltransferase 4 (FUT4) expression, which drives melanoma invasiveness by interfering with adherens junctions (AJs). Global phosphoproteomic and fucoproteomic profiling, coupled with in vitro and in vivo functional validation, further reveal that AR-induced FUT4 fucosylates L1 cell adhesion molecule (L1CAM), which is required for FUT4-increased metastatic capacity. Tumor microarray and gene expression analyses demonstrate that AR-FUT4-L1CAM-AJs signaling correlates with pathological staging in melanoma patients. By delineating key androgen-triggered signaling that enhances metastatic aggressiveness, our findings help explain sex-associated clinical outcome disparities and highlight AR/FUT4 and its effectors as potential prognostic biomarkers and therapeutic targets in melanoma

Mixed allele malaria vaccines: Host protection and within-host selection

Malaria parasites are frequently polymorphic at the antigenic targets of many candidate vaccines, presumably as a consequence of selection pressure from protective immune responses. Conventional wisdom is therefore that vaccines directed against a single variant could select for non-target variants, rendering the vaccine useless. Many people have argued that a solution is to develop vaccines containing the products of more than one variant of the target. However, we are unaware of any evidence that multi-allele vaccines better protect hosts against parasites or morbidity. Moreover, selection of antigen-variants is not the only evolution that could occur in response to vaccination. Increased virulence could also be favored if more aggressive strains are less well controlled by vaccine-induced immunity. Virulence and antigenic identity have been confounded in all studies so far, and so we do not know formally from any animal or human studies whether vaccine failure has been due to evasion of protective responses by variants at target epitopes, or whether vaccines are just less good at protecting against more aggressive strains