The gut microbiome has been previously implemented in a number of diseases. Of note is its substantial role in metabolic syndrome, which encapsulates a group of conditions that increase the risk of cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, and stroke. Understanding the causal relationships between the gut microbiome and host processes...
Obesity and metabolic syndrome (MetS) affect over 1.9 billion adults and 12.7 million youth in the US. If all of today’s obese American youth become obese adults, the total societal costs over their lifetime may exceed $1.1 trillion. We show that feeding rodents a high-fat diet supplemented with xanthohumol (XN)...
Over the past century, life expectancy in the United States has dramatically increased leading to an increasingly aging population with people reaching, and spending more years in ‘old age’. While this unprecedented shift in population demographics represents great strides for humanity, it is not without cost. One consequence of longer...
With growing interest in mass timber, especially mass timber panels (MTP), there has been a need to better understand their structural properties. One of the most versatile uses for MTP are as floor systems. Under new code provisions, these floors can be utilized in new and taller building types, but...
Phosphate and peroxide stabilize new oxo-hydroxo niobium clusters in water at low pH. The clusters open a new chapter in aqueous niobium chemistry under acidic conditions. The clusters also produce atomically smooth, amorphous niobium oxide phosphate (NbPOx) thin films. Reaction pathways from cluster solutions to amorphous niobium oxide phosphate solids...
The concept of reducing laboratory operations into microfluidic devices has been an attractive area of research for several decades. Due to several advantages of porous-media microfluidic devices including low mass, portability, power-free fluid transport, and the ability to store dried reagents in the porous structures, these devices show great promise...
Animals aggregate and interact in nonuniform and nonrandom patterns, which lead to group level characteristics that have important evolutionary and ecological consequences. Network analysis provides a useful conceptual framework for linking animal interactions at all scales from dyads to communities, to populations and ecosystems. Despite exciting theoretical and applied advances...
Popular botanical dietary supplements marketed for management of menopausal symptoms, including hops (Humulus lupulus L.), red clover (Trifolium pratense) and licorice (Glycyrrhiza uralensis), were evaluated for their potential to alter CYP-mediated drug metabolism clinically and pre-clinically. Both hops and red clover had been reported to inhibit certain cytochrome P450 (CYP)...
Cyclic nitramines are a class of compounds that include most of the commonly used explosives today. These are among the most common toxicants released into the environment as a result of human activity, generated on military ranges, battlefields, and production sites. Of these, hexahydro-1,3,5-trinitro-1,3,5- triazine (RDX) is of particular interest,...
Vertebrates communicate with one another and coordinate intraspecific reproduction by using a variety of sexually dimorphic signals, such as plumage, ornaments, sounds, and/or scents. These sexual dimorphisms are maintained by physiological factors, typically sex-specific hormones (though see Chapter 3 for an exception). The purpose of the research in this dissertation...