Patterns of Urban Hummingbird Nest Distribution on the LMU Campus

Urban environments provide numerous benefits to hummingbirds including feeders, planted flowers, and nesting sites. The thermal environment, among other factors, may be important to hummingbird’s choice of nesting microhabitats (Calder 1974). Allen’s and Anna’s Hummingbird (Selasphorus sasin sedentarius) breeds during the winter months in Los Angeles (Clarke 2017). Between 2012 and 2016, five active hummingbird nests were discovered and monitored on the LMU campus. In 2017, 15 active nests were monitored on the LMU campus. The locations of these 15 active nests and 45 older nests seemed to exhibit a clustered pattern, and individual nests often were in close proximity to built structures. Question: How does the distribution of 2018 nests across the LMU campus compare to the distribution of hummingbird 2017 nests? What are the microhabitats surrounding hummingbird nests? Hypothesis: The distribution of 2018 hummingbird nests across the LMU campus will be similar to the 2017 distribution. Most nests will be partially sheltered from the sun and wind by their surroundings, and many will be in close proximity to built structures.https://digitalcommons.lmu.edu/cures_posters/1025/thumbnail.jp

Patterns of Urban Hummingbird Nest Distribution on the LMU Campus

Hummingbirds are among the most beautiful, acrobatic and mysterious animals in urban ecosystems, where these synanthropic species provide important benefits to humans such as pollination and biophilia. We plan to evaluate how various abiotic and biotic factors found in urban environments such as the LMU campus may affect hummingbird nesting patterns. Thorough nest searching throughout campus has revealed an apparent clustered distribution of nests, as well as patterns within the microhabitats of individual nests. We plan to complete a detailed inventory through standardized habitat evaluation and nest searching at Von Der Ahe, where a large number of active (15) and previously used (4) nests have been located (as of 3/20/2017). We predict variables such as shelter from rain and wind, vegetation density, and the proximity of flowers may increase the likelihood of nest site selection in a particular area. Determining where hummingbirds may preferentially nest in an urban environment will facilitate the location of active nests for investigation into hummingbird nesting behavior and physiology and also define landscape habitat attributes that will enhance hummingbird presence.https://digitalcommons.lmu.edu/cures_posters/1009/thumbnail.jp

Art and Medicine: A Collaborative Project Between Virginia Commonwealth University in Qatar and Weill Cornell Medicine in Qatar

Four faculty researchers, two from Virginia Commonwealth University in Qatar, and two from Weill Cornell Medicine in Qatar developed a one semester workshop-based course in Qatar exploring the connections between art and medicine in a contemporary context. Students (6 art / 6 medicine) were enrolled in the course. The course included presentations by clinicians, medical engineers, artists, computing engineers, an art historian, a graphic designer, a painter, and other experts from the fields of art, design, and medicine. To measure the student experience of interdisciplinarity, the faculty researchers employed a mixed methods approach involving psychometric tests and observational ethnography. Data instruments included pre- and post-course semi-structured audio interviews, pre-test / post-test psychometric instruments (Budner Scale and Torrance Tests of Creativity), observational field notes, self-reflective blogging, and videography. This book describes the course and the experience of the students. It also contains images of the interdisciplinary work they created for a culminating class exhibition. Finally, the book provides insight on how different fields in a Middle Eastern context can share critical /analytical thinking tools to refine their own professional practices

Putting the Patient Back in Patient Care: Health Decision-Making from the Patient’s Perspective

This research explored health decision-making processes among people recently diagnosed with type 2 diabetes. Our analysis suggested that diagnosis with type 2 was followed by a period of intense emotional and cognitive disequilibrium. Subsequently, the informants were observed to proceed to health decision-making which was affected by three separate and interrelated factors: knowledge, self-efficacy, and purpose. Knowledge included cognitive or factual components and emotional elements. Knowledge influenced the degree of upset or disequilibrium the patient experienced, and affected a second category, agency: the informants’ confidence in their ability to enact lifestyle changes. The third factor, purpose, summarized the personal and deeply held reasons people gave as they made decisions concerning their health, eating and exercising. We propose this model, grounded in informant stories, as a heuristic, to guide further inquiry. From these stories, the patient is seen as more active and the interrelated influences of knowledge, agency, and purpose, synergistically interact to explain changes in health behaviors

Optimization of DNA extraction for advancing coral microbiota investigations

© The Author(s), 2017. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Microbiome 5 (2017): 18, doi:10.1186/s40168-017-0229-y.We designed a two-phase study in order to propose a comprehensive and efficient method for DNA extraction from microbial cells present in corals and investigate if extraction method influences microbial community composition. During phase I, total DNA was extracted from seven coral species in a replicated experimental design using four different MO BIO Laboratories, Inc., DNA Isolation kits: PowerSoil®, PowerPlant® Pro, PowerBiofilm®, and UltraClean® Tissue & Cells (with three homogenization permutations). Technical performance of the treatments was evaluated using DNA yield and amplification efficiency of small subunit ribosomal RNA (SSU ribosomal RNA (rRNA)) genes. During phase II, potential extraction biases were examined via microbial community analysis of SSU rRNA gene sequences amplified from the most successful DNA extraction treatments. In phase I of the study, the PowerSoil® and PowerPlant® Pro extracts contained low DNA concentrations, amplified poorly, and were not investigated further. Extracts from PowerBiofilm® and UltraClean® Tissue and Cells permutations were further investigated in phase II, and analysis of sequences demonstrated that overall microbial community composition was dictated by coral species and not extraction treatment. Finer pairwise comparisons of sequences obtained from Orbicella faveolata, Orbicella annularis, and Acropora humilis corals revealed subtle differences in community composition between the treatments; PowerBiofilm®-associated sequences generally had higher microbial richness and the highest coverage of dominant microbial groups in comparison to the UltraClean® Tissue and Cells treatments, a result likely arising from using a combination of different beads during homogenization. Both the PowerBiofilm® and UltraClean® Tissue and Cells treatments are appropriate for large-scale analyses of coral microbiota. However, studies interested in detecting cryptic microbial members may benefit from using the PowerBiofilm® DNA treatment because of the likely enhanced lysis efficiency of microbial cells attributed to using a variety of beads during homogenization. Consideration of the methodology involved with microbial DNA extraction is particularly important for studies investigating complex host-associated microbiota.This project was supported by NSF award OCE-1233612 to AA and NSF GRFP award to LW

Site C-2: Frederick, Maryland Feasibility Analysis

Final project (Fall 2014). Real Estate Development Program, University of Maryland, College Park.According to the Frederick Comprehensive Plan, new developments should, “…allow for land uses that enhance the Central Business District (CBD) as a tourism, arts, and business center.” Hotel 162 and Artist Studios will serve as a destination along Carroll Creek Park, attracting tourists and residents alike. We have crafted a leasing, financing and design plan that implements clever adaptive reuse and design to convert the existing undeveloped land and adjacent properties into an art-centric boutique hotel, with public amenities to support the Carroll Creek Park Amphitheater and the surrounding neighborhood. The development will include a 120 key hotel with an adjoining restaurant, a local food market and rentable art studio spaces. The City of Frederick has nurtured a vibrant art scene for decades. Public art is an integral part of the Carroll Creek Park. Public art such as Carroll Creek’s Community Bridge, iron trees, water features and mosaics not only attract visitors to the City of Frederick, but also enhance the city’s role as a cultural and recreational resource. 1 To support the Carroll Creek Park Amphitheater and the Delaplaine Visual Arts Education Center, the development will incorporate artist and dance studios, as well as gallery space that will draw visitors to the site and further down the Park.The City of Frederic

Manipulation of Cellular Machinery to Produce Anti-cancer Drugs

The nocardioazine natural products are uniquely prenylated and methylated indole alkaloid diketopiperazines (DKPs) that reverse drug resistance of cancer cell lines. We unveiled the nocardioazine biosynthetic pathway from a marine actinomycete, demonstrating that a cyclodipeptide synthase catalyzes cyclo(L-Trp-L-Trp) DKP precursor formation followed by tailoring of this DKP via a novel racemase, prenyltransferase, and methyltransferase to yield nocardioazine B. These results highlight the aptitude of bacteria for chemical synthesis and offer new enzymatic tools for crafting complex organic molecules

Variation in the flowering time orthologs BrFLC and BrSOC1 in a natural population of Brassica rapa.

Understanding the genetic basis of natural phenotypic variation is of great importance, particularly since selection can act on this variation to cause evolution. We examined expression and allelic variation in candidate flowering time loci in Brassica rapa plants derived from a natural population and showing a broad range in the timing of first flowering. The loci of interest were orthologs of the Arabidopsis genes FLC and SOC1 (BrFLC and BrSOC1, respectively), which in Arabidopsis play a central role in the flowering time regulatory network, with FLC repressing and SOC1 promoting flowering. In B. rapa, there are four copies of FLC and three of SOC1. Plants were grown in controlled conditions in the lab. Comparisons were made between plants that flowered the earliest and latest, with the difference in average flowering time between these groups ∼30 days. As expected, we found that total expression of BrSOC1 paralogs was significantly greater in early than in late flowering plants. Paralog-specific primers showed that expression was greater in early flowering plants in the BrSOC1 paralogs Br004928, Br00393 and Br009324, although the difference was not significant in Br009324. Thus expression of at least 2 of the 3 BrSOC1 orthologs is consistent with their predicted role in flowering time in this natural population. Sequences of the promoter regions of the BrSOC1 orthologs were variable, but there was no association between allelic variation at these loci and flowering time variation. For the BrFLC orthologs, expression varied over time, but did not differ between the early and late flowering plants. The coding regions, promoter regions and introns of these genes were generally invariant. Thus the BrFLC orthologs do not appear to influence flowering time in this population. Overall, the results suggest that even for a trait like flowering time that is controlled by a very well described genetic regulatory network, understanding the underlying genetic basis of natural variation in such a quantitative trait is challenging