Maryland Shared Open Access Repository
MD-SOAR is a shared digital repository platform for twelve colleges and universities in Maryland. It is currently funded by the University System of Maryland and Affiliated Institutions (USMAI) Library Consortium (usmai.org) and other participating partner institutions. MD-SOAR is jointly governed by all participating libraries, who have agreed to share policies and practices that are necessary and appropriate for the shared platform. Within this broad framework, each library provides customized repository services and collections that meet local institutional needs. Please follow the links below to learn more about each library's repository services and collections.
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Elementary School Physical Education Policy and High Stakes Testing: A Childhood Obesity Study
(2024-07-13) Patterson-Askew, Jarvis; Wyatt-Nichol, Heather; University of Baltimore. College of Public Affairs; University of Baltimore. Doctor of Public Administration
This two-way methods-based study explored the connection between childhood obesity rates and state health and physical education (PE) policy. Elementary school educators and administrators from the state of Maryland participated in a virtual interview, written survey, and focus group, offering their perspectives on the PE curriculum, childhood obesity, and how education legislation frames their work. Findings from this study illustrate that respondents agree that the PE curriculum will assist children in achieving recommended physical activity levels. However, respondents express PE class time is often usurped due to the prioritization of subjects represented on standardized testing. A content analysis utilizing strata from the SHAPE 2016 Shape of the Nation, and the Council of State Governments’ 2017 reports on state health and PE policy determined that states with required PE without a mandated minimum time duration and recess have the lowest average childhood obesity rates in comparison to six other policy groups: recess recommendations, states with general activity requirements, PE with a time requirement, states without activity or physical education requirements, and states with multiple policies. Additionally, selected datapoints from the 2021 National Survey of Children’s Health (NSCH) were used to examine the relationships between proxy school wellness variables and childhood obesity. A multiple regression revealed that participation in physical activity had the strongest predictive relationship with state childhood obesity outcomes over: Food Insufficiency, Frequency of Days a Family Shares a Meal, and Free or Reduce-Priced School Meals. Making interventions that focus on children’s physical activity levels a viable approach to reducing childhood obesity rates.
Estimating the climate significance of halogen-driven ozone loss in the tropical marine troposphere
(EGU, 2012-05-04) Saiz-Lopez, A.; Lamarque, J.-F.; Kinnison, D. E.; Tilmes, S.; Ordóñez, C.; Orlando, J. J.; Conley, A. J.; Plane, J. M. C.; Mahajan, A. S.; Sousa Santos, G.; Atlas, E. L.; Blake, D. R.; Sander, S. P.; Schauffler, S.; Thompson, Anne M.; Brasseur, G.
We have integrated observations of tropospheric ozone, very short-lived (VSL) halocarbons and reactive iodine and bromine species from a wide variety of tropical data sources with the global CAM-Chem chemistry-climate model and offline radiative transfer calculations to compute the contribution of halogen chemistry to ozone loss and associated radiative impact in the tropical marine troposphere. The inclusion of tropospheric halogen chemistry in CAM-Chem leads to an annually averaged depletion of around 10% (~2.5 Dobson units) of the tropical tropospheric ozone column, with largest effects in the middle to upper troposphere. This depletion contributes approximately -0.10 W m⁻² to the radiative flux at the tropical tropopause. This negative flux is of similar magnitude to the ~0.33 W m⁻² contribution of tropospheric ozone to present-day radiative balance as recently estimated from satellite observations. We find that the implementation of oceanic halogen sources and chemistry in climate models is an important component of the natural background ozone budget and we suggest that it needs to be considered when estimating both preindustrial ozone baseline levels and long term changes in tropospheric ozone.
A multi-sensor upper tropospheric ozone product (MUTOP) based on TES ozone and GOES water vapor: validation with ozonesondes
(EGU, 2012-06-29) Moody, J. L.; Felker, S. R.; Wimmers, A. J.; Osterman, G.; Bowman, K.; Thompson, Anne M.; Tarasick, D. W.
Accurate representation of ozone in the extratropical upper troposphere (UT) remains a challenge. However, the implementation of hyper-spectral remote sensing using satellite instruments such as the Tropospheric Emission Spectrometer (TES) provides an avenue for mapping ozone in this region, from 500 to 300 hPa. As a polar orbiting satellite TES observations are limited, but in this paper they are combined with geostationary satellite observations of water vapor. This paper describes a validation of the Multi-sensor UT Ozone Product (MUTOP). MUTOP, based on a statistical retrieval method, is an image product derived from the multiple regression of remotely sensed TES ozone, against geostationary (GOES) specific humidity (remotely sensed) and potential vorticity (a modeled dynamical tracer in the UT). These TES-derived UT ozone mixing ratios are compared to coincident ozonesonde measurements of layer-average UT ozone mixing ratios made during the NASA INTEX/B field campaign in the spring of 2006; the region for this study is effectively the GOES west domain covering the eastern North Pacific Ocean and the western United States. This intercomparison evaluates MUTOP skill at representing ozone magnitude and variability in this region of complex dynamics. In total, 11 ozonesonde launch sites were available for this study, providing 127 individual sondes for comparison; the overall mean ozone of the 500–300 hPa layer for these sondes was 78.0 ppbv. MUTOP reproduces in~situ measurements reasonably well, producing an UT mean of 82.3 ppbv, with a mean absolute error of 12.2 ppbv and a root mean square error of 16.4 ppbv relative to ozonesondes across all sites. An overall UT mean bias of 4.3 ppbv relative to sondes was determined for MUTOP. Considered in the context of past TES validation studies, these results illustrate that MUTOP is able to maintain accuracy similar to TES while expanding coverage to the entire GOES-West satellite domain. In addition MUTOP provides six-hour temporal resolution throughout the INTEX-B study period, making the visualization of UT ozone dynamics possible. This paper presents the overall statistical validation as well as a selection of ozonesonde case studies. The case studies illustrate that error may not always represent a lack of TES-derived product skill, but often results from discrepancies driven by observations made in the presence of strong meteorological gradients.
Gliese 12 b: A Temperate Earth-sized Planet at 12 pc Ideal for Atmospheric Transmission Spectroscopy
(AAS, 2024-05-23) Kuzuhara, Masayuki; Fukui, Akihiko; Livingston, John H.; Caballero, José A.; Leon, Jerome P. de; Hirano, Teruyuki; Kasagi, Yui; Murgas, Felipe; Narita, Norio; Omiya, Masashi; Orell-Miquel, Jaume; Palle, Enric; Changeat, Quentin; Esparza-Borges, Emma; Harakawa, Hiroki; Hellier, Coel; Hori, Yasunori; Ikuta, Kai; Ishikawa, Hiroyuki Tako; Kodama, Takanori; Kotani, Takayuki; Kudo, Tomoyuki; Morales, Juan C.; Mori, Mayuko; Nagel, Evangelos; Parviainen, Hannu; Perdelwitz, Volker; Reiners, Ansgar; Ribas, Ignasi; Sanz-Forcada, Jorge; Sato, Bun’ei; Schweitzer, Andreas; Tabernero, Hugo M.; Takarada, Takuya; Uyama, Taichi; Watanabe, Noriharu; Zechmeister, Mathias; García, Néstor Abreu; Aoki, Wako; Beichman, Charles; Béjar, Víctor J. S.; Brandt, Timothy D.; Calatayud-Borras, Yéssica; Carleo, Ilaria; Charbonneau, David; Collins, Karen A.; Currie, Thayne; Doty, John P.; Dreizler, Stefan; Fernández-Rodríguez, Gareb; Fukuda, Izuru; Galán, Daniel; Geraldía-González, Samuel; González-Rodríguez, Josafat; Hayashi, Yuya; Hedges, Christina; Henning, Thomas; Hodapp, Klaus; Ikoma, Masahiro; Isogai, Keisuke; Jacobson, Shane; Janson, Markus; Jenkins, Jon M.; Kagetani, Taiki; Kambe, Eiji; Kawai, Yugo; Kawauchi, Kiyoe; Kokubo, Eiichiro; Konishi, Mihoko; Korth, Judith; Krishnamurthy, Vigneshwaran; Kurokawa, Takashi; Kusakabe, Nobuhiko; Kwon, Jungmi; Laza-Ramos, Andrés; Libotte, Florence; Luque, Rafael; Madrigal-Aguado, Alberto; Matsumoto, Yuji; Mawet, Dimitri; McElwain, Michael W.; Gallardo, Pedro Pablo Meni; Morello, Giuseppe; Torres, Sara Muñoz; Nishikawa, Jun; Nugroho, Stevanus K.; Ogihara, Masahiro; Peláez-Torres, Alberto; Rapetti, David; Sánchez-Benavente, Manuel; Schlecker, Martin; Seager, Sara; Serabyn, Eugene; Serizawa, Takuma; Stangret, Monika; Takahashi, Aoi; Teng, Huan-Yu; Tamura, Motohide; Terada, Yuka; Ueda, Akitoshi; Usuda, Tomonori; Vanderspek, Roland; Vievard, Sébastien; Watanabe, David; Winn, Joshua N.; Osorio, Maria Rosa Zapatero
Recent discoveries of Earth-sized planets transiting nearby M dwarfs have made it possible to characterize the atmospheres of terrestrial planets via follow-up spectroscopic observations. However, the number of such planets receiving low insolation is still small, limiting our ability to understand the diversity of the atmospheric composition and climates of temperate terrestrial planets. We report the discovery of an Earth-sized planet transiting the nearby (12 pc) inactive M3.0 dwarf Gliese 12 (TOI-6251) with an orbital period (P orb) of 12.76 days. The planet, Gliese 12 b, was initially identified as a candidate with an ambiguous P orb from TESS data. We confirmed the transit signal and P orb using ground-based photometry with MuSCAT2 and MuSCAT3, and validated the planetary nature of the signal using high-resolution images from Gemini/NIRI and Keck/NIRC2 as well as radial velocity (RV) measurements from the InfraRed Doppler instrument on the Subaru 8.2 m telescope and from CARMENES on the CAHA 3.5 m telescope. X-ray observations with XMM-Newton showed the host star is inactive, with an X-ray-to-bolometric luminosity ratio of log Lₓ / L bol ≈ -5.7. Joint analysis of the light curves and RV measurements revealed that Gliese 12 b has a radius of 0.96 ± 0.05 R⊕, a 3σ mass upper limit of 3.9 M⊕, and an equilibrium temperature of 315 ± 6 K assuming zero albedo. The transmission spectroscopy metric (TSM) value of Gliese 12 b is close to the TSM values of the TRAPPIST-1 planets, adding Gliese 12 b to the small list of potentially terrestrial, temperate planets amenable to atmospheric characterization with JWST.
Sex-specific mechanisms underlie long-term potentiation at hippocampus-medium spiny neuron synapses in the medial shell of the nucleus accumbens
(Society for Neuroscience, 2024-05-24) Copenhaver, Ashley E.; LeGates, Tara
Sex differences have complicated our understanding of the neurobiological basis of many behaviors that are key for survival. As such, continued elucidation of the similarities and differences between sexes is necessary to gain insight into brain function and vulnerability. The connection between the hippocampus (Hipp) and nucleus accumbens (NAc) is a crucial site where modulation of neuronal activity mediates reward-related behavior. Our previous work demonstrated that long-term potentiation (LTP) of Hipp→NAc synapses is rewarding, and mice can establish learned associations between LTP of these synapses and the contextual environment in which LTP occurred. Here, we investigated sex differences in the mechanisms underlying Hipp→NAc LTP using whole-cell electrophysiology and pharmacology. We observed similarities in basal synaptic strength between males and females and found that LTP occurs postsynaptically with similar magnitudes in both sexes. However, key sex differences emerged as LTP in males required NMDA receptors (NMDAR) whereas LTP in females utilized an NMDAR-independent mechanism involving L-type voltage-gated Ca²⁺ channels (VGCC) and estrogen receptor α (ERα). We also uncovered sex-similar features as LTP in both sexes depended on CaMKII activity and occurred independently of dopamine-1 receptor (D1R) activation. Our results have elucidated sex-specific molecular mechanisms for LTP in an integral pathway that mediates reward-related behaviors, emphasizing the importance of considering sex as a variable in mechanistic studies. Continued characterization of sex-specific mechanisms underlying plasticity will offer novel insight into the neurophysiological basis of behavior, with significant implications for understanding how diverse processes mediate behavior and contribute to vulnerability to developing psychiatric disorders. Significance statement Strengthening of hippocampus-nucleus accumbens (Hipp-NAc) synapses drives reward-related behaviors. Long-term potentiation (LTP) occurs with a similar magnitude in males and females, and both sexes have a predicted postsynaptic locus of plasticity. Despite these similarities, here we illustrate that sex-specific molecular mechanisms underlie LTP at Hipp-NAc synapses. Given the bidirectional relationship between Hipp-NAc synaptic strength in mediating reward-related behaviors, the use of distinct molecular mechanisms may explain sex differences observed in stress susceptibility or response to rewarding stimuli. Uncovering these latent sex differences offers a deeper understanding of the sex-specific function of this behaviorally-relevant synapse with widespread implications for circuits that underlie learning and reward-related behavior.