Efficacy of volatile organic compounds as treatment for bats affected with white-nose syndrome

Pseudogymnoascus destructans, the causative agent of white-nose syndrome (WNS), is a fungal pathogen implicated in the widespread mortality of hibernating bats across North America. Since its arrival to the United States in 2006, the pathogen has spread rapidly to 34 US states and 7 Canadian provinces. Researchers have been searching for disease management strategies to minimize the spread and severity of this fungal pathogen, as bats are an important aspect of a healthy regional and global ecosystem as insect predators and pollinators. Volatile organic compounds (VOCs), produced by a variety of microorganisms, have been found to exhibit antimicrobial properties against fungal pathogens such as Ophidiomyces ophiodiicola, the causative agent of snake fungal disease. Due to this observed antifungal activity, an in vitro experiment was conducted to explore the potential antifungal activity of VOCS against P. destructans mycelial growth. The experiment involved exposing mycelial plugs of P. destructans to various concentrations of VOCs and measuring the radial mycelial growth. One VOC, an azole compound, exhibited \u3e50% inhibition of P. destructans mycelial growth when compared to the control

Ibarra vs. State, 134 Nev. Adv. Op. 70 (Sept. 13, 2018) (en banc)

The Court determined a defendant can be convicted of larceny from the person when a defendant fraudulently persuades a person to temporarily hand over their property, when in fact the defendant intends to permanently take the person’s property without the person’s consent for purposes of NRS 205.270(1)

Coker v. Sassone, 135 Nev. Adv. Op. 2 (Jan. 3, 2019)

The Court clarified that the appropriate standard of review for a district court’s denial or grant of an anti-SLAPP motion to dismiss is de novo

Innocent Artists: Creativity and Growing Up in Literatures of Maturation, 1850-1920

This project combines three subgenres of the novel—children’s literature, the Bildungsroman, and the Künstlerroman—under a new comprehensive category I term “literatures of maturation,” or texts that share a concern with the inner and outer formation of the individual, with growing up, and with childhood. By reading British literatures of maturation from both the Victorian and modern eras (that is, within the time frame of the Golden Age of children’s literature), I reveal that, creativity disrupts literary plots of growth and development, and that social integration and artistic maturation battle for dominance in the child’s journey to adulthood, resulting in a narrative and in a developmental outcome that reflects the changing historical plot of childhood itself. When the recognition of adolescence as a developmental stage interrupts the linear historical plot of maturation at the beginning of the twentieth century, so too does creativity’s disruption of fictional plots of maturation increase, causing a shift from the social integration of the Bildungsroman to the artistic triumph of the Künstlerroman. This study is organized by gender and time because these two contexts greatly affect patterns of maturation. The four major chapters of Innocent Artists read a Bildungsroman or a Künstlerroman and a work of children’s literature that fall between, or right outside of the dates 1850-1920. Each combined reading shows how the necessity of social maturation suppresses the child’s creativity or how the child flees the social in pursuit of artistic maturation. Addressing the centrality of the creative child and the process of growing up in literatures of maturation reveals how changing historical plots of childhood reorganize literary genres and how the creative child’s liberation from narratives of social integration and from adulthood itself is crucial for the formation of the Künstlerroman

Letter from Whitney Jones to A. C. Van Raalte

A letter from Whitney Jones, Auditor General, State of Michigan, to the Rev. Albertus C. Van Raalte, about an inquiry Van Raalte made about tax claims on some of his pieces of property in the City of Holland.https://digitalcommons.hope.edu/vrp_1850s/1299/thumbnail.jp

High and Intermediate-Mass Young Stellar Objects in the Large Magellanic Cloud

(Abridged) Photometry of archival Spitzer observations of the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) are used to search for young stellar objects (YSOs). Simple mid-infrared selection criteria were used to exclude most normal and evolved stars and background galaxies. We identify a sample of 2,910 sources in the LMC that could potentially be YSOs. We then simultaneously considered images and photometry from the optical through mid-IR wavelengths to assess the source morphology, spectral energy distribution (SED), and the surrounding interstellar environment to determine the most likely nature of each source. From this examination of the initial sample, we suggest 1,172 sources are most likely YSOs and 1,075 probable background galaxies, consistent with expectations based on SWIRE survey data. Spitzer IRS observations of 269 of the brightest YSOs from our sample have confirmed that ~>95% are indeed YSOs. A comprehensive search for YSOs in the LMC has also been carried out by the SAGE team. There are three major differences between these two searches. (1) In the common region of color-magnitude space, ~850 of our 1,172 probable YSOs are missed in the SAGE YSO catalog because their conservative point source identification criteria have excluded YSOs superposed on complex diffuse emission. (2) About 20-30% of the YSOs identified by the SAGE team are sources we classify as background galaxies. (3) the SAGE YSO catalog identifies YSO in parts of color-magnitude space that we excluded and thus contains more evolved or fainter YSOs missed by our analysis. Finally, the mid-IR luminosity functions of our most likely YSO candidates in the LMC can be well described by N(L) propto L^-1, which is consistent with the Salpeter initial mass function if a mass-luminosity relation of L propto M^2.4 is adopted.Comment: Accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series. 67 pages, 20 figures, 16 tables. A version with full resolution figures is available at http://www.astro.illinois.edu/~gruendl/LMC_YSO.pdf. Full tables available on request or through ApJ

Single Plant Selection as a Screening Method for Resistance to Rhizoctonia solani and Pythium ultimum in Cotton

Upland cotton, Gossypium hirsutum L., is grown extensively in the southern United States with an annual farmgate value of $6 billion and an annual national economic impact of over$120 billion. Damage due to biotic pests, including what is known as the cotton seedling disease complex (CSDC), contribute to these losses. Two particular CSDC pathogens, Rhizoctonia solani and Pythium ultimum, are the most significant soilborne pathogens of cotton in the United States. A program for R. solani and P. ultimum resistant cotton germplasm was established at Texas A&M University AgriLife Research. Five germplasm families selected for elevated levels of condensed tannins were evaluated for resistance to R. solani and P. ultimum. Two generations of single plant selections resulted in three generations, C_(0) (original families or Cycle 0) C_(1), selected from the C_(0) family, and C_(2), selected from the C_(1) generation. C_(1) and C_(2) were putative resistant families after one or two generation(s) of selection, respectively. Individual plants from the three generations within five families were challenged with either or both R. solani or P. ultimum to evaluate the progress of single plant selection for resistance. A susceptible cultivar for R. solani- and P. ultimum-resistance respectively, were included. Different R. solani and P. ultimum families from each generation of selection were evaluated at three inoculation levels with four replications per family. Differences in level of resistance between each generation were evaluated by comparing disease level in a randomized complete block. Cross-resistance was evaluated, i.e., C_(2) families originally screened under R. solani pressure were inoculated and screened for P. ultimum resistance and vice versa. Individual plant selection (IPS) in an artificial environment may be a useful and important tool in developing seedling disease-resistant cotton germplasm. Furthermore, it can be concluded that the family evaluated is of importance to determine the amount of progress made in terms of disease resistance with IPS. Individual plant selection when challenged with appropriate levels R. solani and P. ultimum appears to be an effective tool for selection of germplasm resistant to these seedling disease causing pathogens

Berry phase in open quantum systems: a quantum Langevin equation approach

The evolution of a two level system with a slowly varying Hamiltonian, modeled as s spin 1/2 in a slowly varying magnetic field, and interacting with a quantum environment, modeled as a bath of harmonic oscillators is analyzed using a quantum Langevin approach. This allows to easily obtain the dissipation time and the correction to the Berry phase in the case of an adiabatic cyclic evolution.Comment: 6 pages, no figures. Published versio