The University of Nebraska Omaha (Omaha or UNO) is a public research university in Omaha, Nebraska. Founded in 1908 by faculty from the Omaha Presbyterian Theological Seminary as a private non-sectarian college, the university was originally known as the University of Omaha. Originally meant to provide a Christian-based education free from ecclesiastical control, the university served as a strong alternative to the city's many successful religiously affiliated institutions.Since the year 2000, the university has more than tripled its student housing and opened a 450-bed student dormitory and academic space on its south campus in 2017. It has also recently constructed modern facilities for its engineering, information technology, business, and biomechanics programs. UNO currently offers more than 200 programs of study across 6 different colleges and has over 60 classroom, student, athletic, and research facilities spread across 3 campuses. It is classified among "R2: Doctoral Universities – High research activity".The Omaha Mavericks compete in 15 NCAA Division I sports in both the NCHC and Summit League conferences. The ice hockey, basketball, and volleyball teams compete in the new Baxter Arena located on the university's Center street campus. Softball and baseball facilities are currently under construction. UNO enjoyed national attention in 2015, when its men's hockey team reached the national semifinal (Frozen Four) of the NCAA tournament for the first time.
Although gene duplication is an important source of evolutionary innovation, the functional divergence of duplicates can be opposed by ongoing gene conversion between them. Here, we report on the evolution of a tandem duplication of Na+,K+-ATPase subunit α1 (ATP1A1) shared by frogs in the genus Leptodactylus, a group of species that feeds on toxic toads. One ATP1A1 paralog evolved resistance to toad toxins although the other retained ancestral susceptibility. Within species, frequent non-allelic gene conversion homogenized most of the sequence between the two copies but was counteracted by strong selection on 12 amino acid substitutions that distinguish the two paralogs. Protein-engineering experiments show that two of these substitutions substantially increase toxin resistance, whereas the additional 10 mitigate their deleterious effects on ATPase activity. Our results reveal how examination of neo-functionalized gene duplicate evolution can help pinpoint key functional substitutions and interactions with the genetic backgrounds on which they arise.
This manuscript tests whether artificial intelligence (AI) review of body-worn camera footage replicates the findings of a randomized-controlled trial of police de-escalation training using systematic social observation (SSO). Body-worn camera video that was previously analyzed using SSO was subjected to review by an AI program. The study then replicates the analysis of the randomized-controlled trial using outcomes generated by AI. The results are compared to those of the original study. All five measures produced by the AI correlated with at least one SSO measure, though several SSO measures appeared completely unrelated to any measure produced by AI. The analysis of treatment effects by AI reaches the same conclusion as the original study. SSO provides greater nuance to understanding police interactions but is weakened by its time-consuming and expensive nature. AI provides a promising avenue for conducting similar analyses more quickly and efficiently.
Identifying nonlinear dynamics and characterizing noise from data is critical across science and engineering for understanding and modeling the behavior of the systems accurately. The modified sparse identification of nonlinear dynamics (mSINDy) has emerged as an effective framework for identifying systems embedded in heavy noise; however, further improvements can expand its capabilities and robustness. By integrating the weak SINDy (WSINDy) into mSINDy, we introduce the weak mSINDy (WmSINDy) to improve the system identification and noise modeling by harnessing the strengths of both approaches. The proposed algorithm simultaneously identifies parsimonious nonlinear dynamics and infers the noise present in the system using automatic differentiation. We evaluate WmSINDy using several nonlinear systems, including systems with control inputs, and apply it to experimental data. WmSINDy demonstrates improved accuracy and noise characterization over baselines for systems embedded in relatively strong noise.
Additive gene action is assumed to underlie quantitative traits, but the eventual poor performance of elite wheat lines as parents suggests that epistasis could be the underlying genetic architecture. Sign epistasis is characterized by alleles having either a beneficial or detrimental effect depending on the genetic background, which can result in elite lines that fail as parents in certain parental combinations. Hence, the objective of this study was to test the existence of sign epistasis and examine its consequences to wheat breeding. The presence of sign epistasis is expected to distort the allele frequency distribution between 2 interacting genes compared to neutral sites, creating strong linkage disequilibrium (LD). To test this hypothesis, an analysis of interchromosomal LD in breeding families was performed and detected 19 regions in strong disequilibrium, whose allele frequency distribution matched the sign epistasis prediction and falsified the competing hypothesis of additive selection. To validate these candidate interactions while avoiding the biases of a circular analysis and the confounding effects of genetic drift, 2 independent sets of populations were analyzed. Genetic drift was attributed to creating the sign epistasis patterns observed in 11 interactions, but there was not sufficient evidence to reject the sign epistasis hypothesis in 8 interactions. Sign epistasis may explain the poor performance of elite lines as parents, as crossing lines with complementary allelic combination re-establishes epistatic variance in the offspring. Reduction in the effective population size in certain crosses may also occur when unfavorable sign epistatic combinations are deleterious. The potential existence of di-genic and higher-order epistatic interactions in elite germplasm can tremendously impact breeding strategies as managing epistasis becomes imperative for success.
Hyperbolic phonon polaritons - hybridized modes arising from the ultrastrong coupling of infrared light to strongly anisotropic lattice vibrations in uniaxial or biaxial polar crystals - enable to confine light to the nanoscale with low losses and high directionality. In even lower symmetry materials, such as monoclinic β $\beta$ -Ga2O3 (bGO), hyperbolic shear polaritons (HShPs) further enhance the directionality. Yet, HShPs are intrinsically supported only within narrow frequency ranges defined by the phonon frequencies of the host material. Here, we report spectral tuning of HShPs in bGO by isotopic substitution. Employing near-field optical microscopy to image HShPs in 18O bGO films homoepitaxially grown on a 16O bGO substrate, we demonstrate a spectral redshift of ∼ $\sim$ 40 cm-1 for the 18O bGO, compared to 16O bGO. The technique allows for direct observation and a model-free estimation of the spectral shift driven by isotopic substitution without the need for knowledge of the dielectric tensor. Complementary far-field measurements and ab initio calculations - in good agreement with the near-field data - confirm the effectiveness of this estimation. This multifaceted study demonstrates a significant isotopic substitution induced spectral tuning of HShPs into a previously inaccessible frequency range, creating new avenues for technological applications of such highly directional polaritons.
