RSS 1.0UA Faculty Research
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These collections include publications and data from University of Arizona faculty, staff and researchers. The UA Faculty Publications collection consists primarily of open access versions of published journal articles, but also contains conference proceedings and other unique materials from faculty, staff and researchers. Organizational collections, such as the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences Publications, and Water Resources Research Center, contain additional faculty publications such as departmentally produced technical bulletins, technical reports, and working papers.
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A transposon‐introduced G‐quadruplex motif is selectively retained and constrained to downregulate CYP321A1Insects utilize xenobiotic compounds to up- and downregulate cytochrome P450 monooxygenases (P450s) involved in detoxification of toxic xenobiotics including phytochemicals and pesticides. G-quadruplexes (G4)-forming DNA motifs are enriched in the promoter regions of transcription factors and function as cis-acting elements to regulate these genes. Whether and how P450s gain and keep G4 DNA motifs to regulate their expression still remain unexplored. Here, we show that CYP321A1, a xenobiotic-metabolizing P450 from Helicoverpa zea, a polyphagous insect of economic importance, has acquired and preserved a G4 DNA motif by selectively retaining a transposon known as HzIS1-3 that carries this G4 DNA motif in its promoter region. The HzIS1-3 G4 DNA motif acts as a silencer to suppress the constitutive and induced expression of CYP321A1 by plant allelochemicals flavone and xanthotoxin through folding into an intramolecular parallel or hybrid-1 conformation in the absence or presence of K+. The G4 ligand N-methylmesoporphyrin IX (NMM) strengthens the silencing effect of HzIS1-3 G4 DNA motif by switching its structure from hybrid-1 to hybrid-2. The enrichment of transposons in P450s and other environment-adaptation genes implies that selective retention of G4 DNA motif-carrying transposons may be the main evolutionary route for these genes to obtain G4 DNA motifs.
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‘No Life Here:’ The Effects of Motion Picture Incentive on Below the Line Labor in Hollywood SouthIn 2002, Louisiana was one of the first states to begin a motion picture incentive (MPI) program to lure film and television production away from Los Angeles. Today, Louisiana, and especially its media capital, New Orleans, has been described as “Hollywood South,” a prominent North American film and television production center. This satellite production center is the outcome of a trend in local and national governments to use MPI programs to encourage the outsourcing of labor from Los Angeles since the mid-1990s. Using in-depth interviews with location managers in Louisiana, a review of policy documents, and an analysis of public discourse around the phenomenon in Louisiana, we examine the geography of Hollywood South, focusing on local labor and the consequences, efficacy, and ethics of its MPI program.
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Doing film geographyFilm geography as a subdiscipline of cultural and media geography is a long-established field of research that since its emergence more than twenty years ago has diversified into a variety of perspectives. Nowadays, a critical perspective on film is central, which no longer considers the medium merely as a text, but rather as a social practice—a perspective that continues to focus not solely on the meaning of representations, but on what representations do and how they do it. Following Roberts’ (in: Edensor, Kalandides, Kothari (eds) The Routledge handbook of place, Routledge, London, 2020) call for ‘doing film geography,’ this introductory article to the Geojournal Special Issue on Film Geography provides an overview of current trends in the field as well as an overview of the essays included in this collection. In addition to the established film-as-text perspective, we examine the burgeoning research in cinematic cartography, film industry geographies, and videography/documentaries.
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Eco‐evolutionary feedbacks among pollinators, herbivores, and their plant resourcesEco-evolutionary feedbacks among multiple species occur when one species affects another species’ evolution via its effects on the abundance and traits of a shared partner species. What happens if those two species enact opposing effects on their shared partner's population growth? Furthermore, what if those two kinds of interactions involve separate traits? For example, many plants produce distinct suites of traits that attract pollinators (mutualists) and deter herbivores (antagonists). Here, we develop a model to explore how pollinators and herbivores may influence each other's interactions with a shared plant species via evolutionary effects on the plant's nectar and toxin traits. The model results predict that herbivores indirectly select for the evolution of increased nectar production by suppressing plant population growth. The model also predicts that pollinators indirectly select for the evolution of increased toxin production by plants and increased counterdefenses by herbivores via their positive effects on plant population growth. Unless toxins directly affect pollinator foraging, plants always evolve increases in attraction and defense traits when they interact with both kinds of foragers. This work highlights the value of incorporating ecological dynamics to understand the entangled evolution of mutualisms and antagonisms in natural communities.
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Feasibility and Efficacy of Partially Replacing Post-Transplantation Cyclophosphamide with Bendamustine in Pediatric and Young Adult Patients Undergoing Haploidentical Bone Marrow TransplantationPost-transplantation cyclophosphamide (PT-CY) is the most widely applied graft-versus-host disease (GVHD) prophylaxis regimen in T cell-replete haploidentical bone marrow transplantation (haplo-BMT). Although PT-CY has met with great success in the haplo-BMT arena by suppressing GVHD, patients without acute GVHD have high relapse rates. One strategy to reduce relapse rates being explored by others is a dosage reduction of PT-CY. We have taken a different approach in evaluating whether partially replacing PT-CY with post-transplantation bendamustine (PT-BEN) would be advantageous, an idea based on our preclinical research identifying several beneficial immunomodulatory properties of BEN. We therefore initiated and completed a Phase Ia trial to evaluate the progressive substitution of PT-CY with PT-BEN (ClinicalTrials.gov identifier NCT02996773). We compared outcomes between 13 patients with high-risk hematologic malignancies who received PT-CY/BEN and 31 contemporaneous haplo-BMT recipients treated with the same myeloablative conditioning regimen but receiving only PT-CY. We found that partial replacement of PT-CY with PT-BEN (PT-CY/BEN) on day +4 was well tolerated and associated with significantly earlier trilineage engraftment. We also report favorable trends toward significant improvements on univariate and multivariate analyses with PT-CY/BEN compared with PT-CY with respect to rates of chronic GVHD (hazard ratio [HR], .08; 95% confidence interval [CI], .005 to 1.11; P = .06), and GVHD-free relapse-free survival (GRFS) (HR, .22; 95% CI, .05 to .86; P = .039). Our human trial has now transitioned to Phase Ib, which will further evaluate the safety and potential benefits of PT-CY/BEN. Herein we also expand our pediatric, adolescent, and young adult experience to 31 patients, demonstrating overall survival, progression-free survival, and GRFS at 3 years of 85.6%, 76.1%, and 58.2%, respectively, in a largely racial/ethnic minority cohort. PT-CY/BEN appears to be a promising treatment option that requires further evaluation.
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Restoring Palmer's agave in a Lehmann lovegrass dominated grassland in southeastern ArizonaDryland restoration is becoming increasingly challenging in arid and semiarid regions, such as in the southwestern United States, due to rapid land degradation, the spread of non-native species, and climate change. The development of strategies to enhance restoration of native species, particularly culturally and ecologically important native plants like Palmer's agave (Agave palmeri), is particularly critical in southeastern arid lands where scarce rainfall, herbivory, and invasive species dominance pose unique challenges to land management. In a large field experiment in southeastern Arizona, U.S.A., we assessed the utility of several management techniques to promote restoration and revegetation outcomes for Palmer's agave survival and growth, including protection from solar insolation and herbivory, and reduction in the competitiveness of Lehmann lovegrass (Eragrostis lehmanniana). We found that the combination of herbivory protection and shade resulted in the highest survival of planted agaves, while the shade treatment alone resulted in the largest agaves. In fact, our results suggest that dense Lehmann lovegrass cover protects agaves from direct sunlight and predation. If land managers are challenged by widespread Lehmann lovegrass, they can opt to mechanically reduce it. However, if population recovery of Palmer's agave is a priority and fire hazard is minimal, our work suggests that stakeholders concerned with population recovery of Palmer's agave can forgo removing existing vegetation and plant agaves in a matrix of (and/or under the canopy of) existing vegetation.
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Early age-related atrophy of cutaneous lymph nodes precipitates an early functional decline in skin immunity in mice with agingSignificance: Older adults are more vulnerable to infection and less capable of vigorously responding to vaccination. The contribution of peripheral T cell maintenance defects to these processes is incompletely understood. Here, we provide evidence that lymph nodes (LNs), which are critical for naive T (TN) cell maintenance and initiation of new immune responses, age asynchronously. Skin-draining LNs undergo early (6 to 9 mo) and deeper LN and spleen late-life (18 mo) atrophy, characterized by reduced ability to maintain TN cells, structural and numerical loss of LN stromal cell microenvironments, and reduced immunity to cutaneous vaccination. These results highlight the critical role of age-related LN atrophy in functional immunity and immune homeostasis.
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Assessing the Sampleability of Bennu’s Surface for the OSIRIS-REx Asteroid Sample Return MissionNASA’s first asteroid sample return mission, OSIRIS-REx, collected a sample from the surface of near-Earth asteroid Bennu in October 2020 and will deliver it to Earth in September 2023. Selecting a sample collection site on Bennu’s surface was challenging due to the surprising lack of large ponded deposits of regolith particles exclusively fine enough (≤2cm diameter) to be ingested by the spacecraft’s Touch-and-Go Sample Acquisition Mechanism (TAGSAM). Here we describe the Sampleability Map of Bennu, which was constructed to aid in the selection of candidate sampling sites and to estimate the probability of collecting sufficient sample. “Sampleability” is a numeric score that expresses the compatibility of a given area’s surface properties with the sampling mechanism. The algorithm that determines sampleability is a best fit functional form to an extensive suite of laboratory testing outcomes tracking the TAGSAM performance as a function of four observable properties of the target asteroid. The algorithm and testing were designed to measure and subsequently predict TAGSAM collection amounts as a function of the minimum particle size, maximum particle size, particle size frequency distribution, and the tilt of the TAGSAM head off the surface. The sampleability algorithm operated at two general scales, consistent with the resolution and coverage of data collected during the mission. The first scale was global and evaluated nearly the full surface. Due to Bennu’s unexpected boulder coverage and lack of ponded regolith deposits, the global sampleability efforts relied heavily on additional strategies to find and characterize regions of interest based on quantifying and avoiding areas heavily covered by material too large to be collected. The second scale was site-specific and used higher-resolution data to predict collected mass at a given contact location. The rigorous sampleability assessments gave the mission confidence to select the best possible sample collection site and directly enabled successful collection of hundreds of grams of material.
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Evaluating socially engaged climate research: Scientists’ visions of a climate resilient US SouthwestSocially engaged science and collaborative research practices offer promising ways to address complex environmental and societal problems like climate variability and climate change. However, it is unclear if and how these types of collaborative knowledge production result in tangible impacts. Drawing from a 6-year evaluation, this article investigates the outcomes and contributions of ten collaborative research projects supported by a federally funded climate research program in the US Southwest. Based on a series of narratives that outline researchers’ objectives, anticipated outcomes are compared to those that emerged over a 6-year period. Results indicate several contributions that the program has made toward raising awareness about climate issues in the US Southwest, increasing capacity to adapt to climate change and climate variability, and building lasting individual and institutional collaborative relationships. However, researchers sometimes envision direct applications of their work, such as informing policy, planning, and decision-making, to be different than what occurred within the 6-year timeframe. Further exploration of these results reveals implicit assumptions in understanding how scientific information translates into use. This article offers insight into how researchers envision their impact, the management and development of a mission-oriented research program, and the use of evaluation to understand how collaborative research contributes to societal and environmental change.
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Longitudinal Effects of Parkinson's Disease on Speech Breathing During an Extemporaneous Connected Speech TaskPURPOSE: A critical component to the development of any type of intervention to improve speech production in individuals with Parkinson's disease (PD) is a complete understanding of the speech impairments present at each stage of the disease and how these impairments change with disease progression. The purpose of this longitudinal study was to examine the impact of disease on speech production and speech breathing during an extemporaneous speech task in individuals with PD over the course of approximately 3.5 years. METHOD: Eight individuals with PD and eight age- and sex-matched control participants produced an extemporaneous connected speech task on two occasions (Time 1 and Time 2) an average of 3 years 7 months apart. Dependent variables included sound pressure level; utterance length; speech rate; lung volume initiation, termination, and excursion; and percent vital capacity per syllable. RESULTS: From Time 1 to Time 2, individuals with PD demonstrated decreased utterance length and lung volume initiation, termination, and excursion and increased speech rate. Control participants demonstrated decreased utterance length and lung volume termination and increased lung volume excursion and percent vital capacity per syllable from Time 1 to Time 2. CONCLUSIONS: Changes in speech production and speech breathing variables experienced by individuals with PD over the course of several years are related to their disease process and not typical aging. Changes to speech breathing highlight the need to provide intervention focused on increasing efficient respiratory patterning for speech production.
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Predicting Medication Nonadherence in Older Adults With Difficult-to-Treat Depression in the IRL-GRey Randomized Controlled TrialObjective: Nonadherence to antidepressants interferes with optimal treatment of late-life depression. This analysis examines clinical and treatment factors predicting medication nonadherence in difficult-to-treat late-life depression. Methods: Secondary analysis of data from a clinical trial of antidepressant pharmacotherapy for Major Depressive Disorder in 468 adults aged 60+ years. All participants received venlafaxine XR for 12 weeks. Nonremitters were randomized to augmentation with either aripiprazole or placebo for 12 additional weeks. Medication adherence was assessed 14 times over 24 weeks. The analyses examined sociodemographic, clinical, and treatment factors that may predict antidepressant nonadherence during early (weeks 1–6), late (weeks 7–12), and augmentation (weeks 13-–24) treatment. Results: Poor cognitive function and early response were predictive of early nonadherence. Poor cognitive function and prior nonadherence were predictive of late nonadherence. Living alone was associated with nonadherence both late and during augmentation treatment. Conclusion: Future studies should consider the role of early response and cognitive function to improve antidepressant adherence, particularly among older adults who live alone.
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Implications of a “Null” Randomized Controlled Trial of Mindfulness and Compassion Interventions in Healthy AdultsObjectives: Extensive research suggests that short-term meditation interventions may hold therapeutic promise for a wide range of psychosocial outcomes. In response to calls to subject these interventions to more methodologically rigorous tests, a randomized controlled trial tested the effectiveness of a mindfulness meditation intervention and a compassion meditation intervention against an active control in a demographically diverse sample of medically and psychiatrically healthy adults. Methods: Two hundred and four participants completed a battery of questionnaires to assess psychological experience, participated in a laboratory stress test to measure their biological stress reactivity, and wore the Electronically Activated Recorder (EAR) to assess daily behaviors before and after an eight-week intervention (mindfulness meditation intervention, compassion meditation intervention, or health education discussion group). Results: Neither meditation intervention reliably impacted participants’ subjective psychological experience, biological stress reactivity, or objectively assessed daily behaviors. Furthermore, post hoc moderation analyses found that neither baseline distress nor intervention engagement significantly moderated effects. Conclusions: Results from this trial—which was methodologically rigorous and powered to detect all but small effects—were essentially null. These results are an important data point for the body of research about meditation interventions. Implications of these non-significant effects are discussed in the context of prior studies, and future directions for contemplative intervention research are recommended. Clinical Trial Registry: Registry Number: NCT01643369.
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Less Than Fully Honest: Financial Deception in Emerging Adult Romantic RelationshipsEmerging adults lack many basic financial capabilities. To avoid conflict that may come from these deficiencies, some emerging adults may financially deceive their romantic partner. However, little is known about financial deception in emerging adult romantic relationships. Through the lenses of two theoretical frameworks, we test whether financial deception intervenes the associations of couple financial communication, financial socialization, and similarity of financial values with romantic relationship flourishing in a sample of 1,950 U.S. emerging adults. Results indicate that couple financial communication, similarity of financial values, and financial socialization may contribute positively toward romantic relationship flourishing. However, financial socialization and financial deception may contribute negatively toward romantic relationship flourishing. Findings are discussed in light of the theoretical frameworks utilized, implications for clinicians and educators are identified, and directions for future research are presented. In summary, being less than fully honest about finances may have implications for emerging adults in romantic relationships.
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Counteracting Dark Web Text-Based CAPTCHA with Generative Adversarial Learning for Proactive Cyber Threat IntelligenceAutomated monitoring of dark web (DW) platforms on a large scale is the first step toward developing proactive Cyber Threat Intelligence (CTI). While there are efficient methods for collecting data from the surface web, large-scale dark web data collection is often hindered by anti-crawling measures. In particular, text-based CAPTCHA serves as the most prevalent and prohibiting type of these measures in the dark web. Text-based CAPTCHA identifies and blocks automated crawlers by forcing the user to enter a combination of hard-to-recognize alphanumeric characters. In the dark web, CAPTCHA images are meticulously designed with additional background noise and variable character length to prevent automated CAPTCHA breaking. Existing automated CAPTCHA breaking methods have difficulties in overcoming these dark web challenges. As such, solving dark web text-based CAPTCHA has been relying heavily on human involvement, which is labor-intensive and time-consuming. In this study, we propose a novel framework for automated breaking of dark web CAPTCHA to facilitate dark web data collection. This framework encompasses a novel generative method to recognize dark web text-based CAPTCHA with noisy background and variable character length. To eliminate the need for human involvement, the proposed framework utilizes Generative Adversarial Network (GAN) to counteract dark web background noise and leverages an enhanced character segmentation algorithm to handle CAPTCHA images with variable character length. Our proposed framework, DW-GAN, was systematically evaluated on multiple dark web CAPTCHA testbeds. DW-GAN significantly outperformed the state-of-the-art benchmark methods on all datasets, achieving over 94.4% success rate on a carefully collected real-world dark web dataset. We further conducted a case study on an emergent Dark Net Marketplace (DNM) to demonstrate that DW-GAN eliminated human involvement by automatically solving CAPTCHA challenges with no more than three attempts. Our research enables the CTI community to develop advanced, large-scale dark web monitoring. We make DW-GAN code available to the community as an open-source tool in GitHub.
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Evaluation of individual and ensemble probabilistic forecasts of COVID-19 mortality in the United StatesSignificance: This paper compares the probabilistic accuracy of short-term forecasts of reported deaths due to COVID-19 during the first year and a half of the pandemic in the United States. Results show high variation in accuracy between and within stand-alone models and more consistent accuracy from an ensemble model that combined forecasts from all eligible models. This demonstrates that an ensemble model provided a reliable and comparatively accurate means of forecasting deaths during the COVID-19 pandemic that exceeded the performance of all of the models that contributed to it. This work strengthens the evidence base for synthesizing multiple models to support public-health action.
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Impact of in-Station Medication Automated Dispensing Systems on Prehospital Pain Medication AdministrationIntroduction: Medication automatic dispensing systems (ADS) have been implemented in many settings, including fire-based EMS stations. The aim of this study was to evaluate the impact of in-station ADSs on controlled substance administration rates and EMS response intervals. Methods: This study was a retrospective review of data from a single fire-based EMS agency. Medication administration rates and EMS response intervals were compared before ADS implementation (P1; 6/1/15 to 5/31/16) and after ADS implementation (P3; 6/1/17-5/31/19). Cases with missing data and during a one-year implementation period were excluded. Results: 4045 cases were identified in P1 and 8168 in P3. The odds of morphine or versed administration increased following ADS implementation: OR = 1.77 (95% CI: 1.53, 2.03) and OR = 1.53 (95%CI: 1.18, 2.00) respectively. There were statistically, but likely not operationally significant increases in median response interval and transport interval from P1 to P3 of 14 seconds, (p < 0.001) and 39 seconds (p < 0.001) respectively. Time at hospital for all calls decreased by more than 11 minutes for all transports, from a median of 34 minutes (IQR; 23.7, 45.5) to 22.7 minutes (IQR:18.5, 27.6) in P3, p < 0.001 and by 27.9 minutes for calls in which a controlled substance was given: P1 = 50.6 minutes (IQR: 34.6, 63.2), P3 = 22.7 minutes (IQR: 18.3, 27.4), p < 0.001. Conclusion: In this system, medication ADS implementation was associated with an increase in the rates of controlled substance administration and a decrease in the time units were at hospitals.
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Sexual Minority Stressors and Intimate Partner Violence Among Same-Sex Couples: Commitment as a ResourceAccumulating evidence has been found for the associations from sexual minority stressors to intimate partner violence (IPV) among same-sex couples. Yet key gaps still exist, including the rare utilization of couple dyadic data, the understudied moderating and mediating mechanisms, and the few studies conducted during the transitional period of same-sex marriage legalization. To address these gaps, we used cross-sectional, dyadic data collected from 144 US same-sex couples during the 2014–2015 national campaign for the legalization of same-sex marriage. Guided by the systemic transactional model (STM), we examined associations from sexual minority stressors (including both internalized homophobia and discrimination) to same-sex IPV and tested whether commitment moderated or mediated these associations. Overall, we found evidence supporting the STM: (1) High internalized homophobia and discrimination were related to high prevalence and/or frequency of IPV perpetration; (2) high commitment attenuated positive associations between high discrimination and high prevalence and/or frequency of IPV perpetration; and (3) high internalized homophobia was related to low commitment, which in turn was related to high prevalence and/or frequency of IPV perpetration. Collectively, our study identified commitment as both a moderator and mediator in associations from sexual minority stressors to same-sex IPV. Further, the roles of commitment (i.e., moderator or mediator) depend on whether the focal sexual minority stressors are distal and more intermittent (i.e., heterosexist discrimination) or proximal and more constant (i.e., internalized homophobia).
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Control, cost, and confidence: Perseverance and procrastination in the face of failureWe study effort provision and the development of the belief that effort matters over time: a student is uncertain whether she has control over success through her effort or whether success is determined by her innate ability, which she also does not know. In each period, what she can learn about her control and her ability depends on the level of effort she exerts. The student's optimal effort policy in this two-dimensional bandit problem takes the form of a linear belief cutoff rule and typically features repeated switching of the effort level. Moreover, we define perseverance and procrastination as indices for the student's behavior over time and analyze how they are affected by control, cost, and confidence. Finally, we relate our results to findings in educational psychology and discuss policies to foster perseverance and to lower procrastination.
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Examining the perspectives of adult working learners and key stakeholders using critical race theoryPurpose: This article reports on a critical race theory (CRT) analysis of the perspectives of providers of employer-supported educational opportunities and adult learners, who identified as Black, indigenous or as a person of color, and were employed in service industries. Design/methodology/approach: A review of the literature was used to shape an initial interview protocol. Data were collected from working learners in retail, hospitality, restaurants and healthcare industries. An “a priori” coding scheme that drew from CRT was applied to transcripts during analysis. Findings: Analysis revealed that working learners' skills, experiential knowledge, learning mindset, language flexibility and knowledge gained from previous learning experiences were not consistently acknowledged by employers. CRT analysis illustrated that endemic racism exists within educational opportunities and in workplace learning. Originality/value: CRT has not been widely used to examine adult education practice, especially for workforce development and employer-based education programs. This research expands the use of CRT in adult education and encourages critical conversations around equity in learning opportunities offered by employers. CRT informed data analysis uncovered barriers to equitable learning opportunities and workplace learning. A discussion of inequities in work-based learning illustrates there is insufficient awareness of implicit bias, which points to the need for initiatives focused on social justice.
