The reprogramming of somatic cells to a spontaneously contracting cardiomyocyte-like state using defined transcription factors has proven successful in mouse fibroblasts. However, this process has been less successful in human cells, thus limiting the potential clinical applicability of this technology in regenerative medicine. We hypothesized that this issue is due...
Underutilized crops have the potential to economically benefit developing countries and to improve global food security. Breadfruit (Artocarpus altilis, Moraceae) is one such crop that can provide essential nutrients and requires relatively low-energy input to maintain compared to major crops. Humans have selected for many cultivars of breadfruit since its...
As of 2020, there are currently 5.8 million people in the United States suffering from Alzheimer’s Disease (AD), a debilitating and progressive neurodegenerative disorder. Of these nearly six million people, two-thirds are women. While it has been suggested that women’s longer lifespan accounts for this disparity, the overall lifetime risk...
Most cognitive research on conceptual structure has studied undergraduate populations and either natural (biological) or artificial (experiment-specific) categories. This project investigates how people with extensive, rich knowledge about a complex real-world domain organize and use that knowledge. The research extends prior work on differences among types of experts within biological...
Continuous fiber/epoxy composites have been widely used for structural applications due to their excellent mechanical properties, but the benefits of using these composites is limited by their lower than desired matrix-dominated properties. In this study, epoxy matrix in carbon fiber/epoxy composites was modified with graphite nanoplatelets to improve their mechanical...
The circadian clock is a biological oscillator present in all terrestrial life forms that aligns organismal functions with the daily rising and setting of the sun. In mammals clocks are expressed both in pacemaker cells in the brain that are directly entrained by light as well as in all peripheral...
The number of Hispanics in engineering departments at companies and universities differs from the proportion of Hispanics in the US population. Hispanics represented only 8% of the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) workforce in 2020, despite being 17% of the overall workforce. The ethnic disparity in STEM occupations contributes...
Understanding how contexts shape child development is a primary goal of human development research and theory. Child effects, or the influence of children on their own environment, may be a key process by which contexts and children interact to shape subsequent development. Yet, child effects have been under-studied in social...
Behavioral activation (BA) trains depressed clients to engage in more positive activities in order to increase their experience of pleasure and accomplishment, thereby reducing depression. Recent research suggested that BA might be as effective in treating depression as current leading treatments, such as cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) and antidepressant medication (Jacobson,...
Most organisms use rhythms of sunlight to synchronize their activity to the environment. These rhythms of activity are called circadian rhythms. The rhythms persist with near 24 hour periods when external synchronizing cues are absent. In mammals, the circadian clock is generated at the molecular level by a transcriptional/translational feedback...