Publications by authors named "Rollins L"

Article Synopsis
  • Researchers studied yellow-spotted monitors, large varanid lizards in tropical Australia, finding they reach sexual maturity in under a year but have short lifespans, rarely living beyond 2 years for females and 4 for males, particularly before the arrival of toxic cane toads.
  • The study revealed a faster life history for these lizards compared to other monitor species, with males growing rapidly during the wet season but facing high predation risk from pythons.
  • The yellow-spotted monitors are vital to their ecosystem as apex predators, but their high feeding rates and communal nesting make food webs more susceptible to disruption from invasive cane toads.
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Previous research has shown that eye movements can serve as an indirect indicator of relational memory. The goal of the current research was to assess how eye movements coincide with different forms of spatial and associative memory. Young adults encoded object-scene combinations and were subsequently presented with repeated, novel, and manipulated scenes.

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Article Synopsis
  • - The growth of human populations has led to the increase of invasive species around the world, making it crucial to study how their introduction and subsequent processes affect current diversity and structure.
  • - The European starling, introduced to New Zealand in the 19th century, serves as a case study for examining genetic population structure and diversity through reduced representation sequencing.
  • - Findings revealed limited gene flow within New Zealand's starling population, confirmed historical translocation events, and highlighted the importance of genomic analysis for understanding invasive species management and gene flow.
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Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) has been widely used in genetics research for decades. Contamination from nuclear DNA of mitochondrial origin (NUMTs) can confound studies of phylogenetic relationships and mtDNA heteroplasmy. Homology searches with mtDNA are widely used to detect NUMTs in the nuclear genome.

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Parasites may suppress the immune function of infected hosts using microRNAs (miRNAs) to prevent protein production. Nonetheless, little is known about the diversity of miRNAs and their mode(s) of action. In this study, we investigated the effects of infection by a parasitic lungworm (Rhabdias pseudosphaerocephala) on miRNA and mRNA expression of its host, the invasive cane toad (Rhinella marina).

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Article Synopsis
  • - Racial and ethnic disparities in maternal mortality rates in the U.S. highlight the urgent need for improved maternity care quality and safety for all women, particularly in the southeastern region.
  • - This project aims to test the effectiveness of pre-conception counseling with father involvement in community settings, focusing on enhancing cardiovascular health outcomes before and during pregnancy.
  • - The study involves assessing community needs, conducting a pilot program, and evaluating the implementation of counseling to identify and address barriers, with the goal of creating sustainable public health strategies to reduce maternal health issues.
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The parenting literature has established the coparenting relationship as central to the parenting behaviors and outcomes of men. The construct of coparenting encompasses supportive efforts among individuals that facilitate the rearing of children and unsupportive actions that can undermine parenting efforts (Merrifield & Gamble, 2013). Few studies have examined undermining coparenting as an experience that shapes Black men's health outcomes.

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Article Synopsis
  • - The study evaluated Project DINE, an initiative in Georgia that added nutrition and breastfeeding education to Healthy Start programs, specifically targeting Black expecting parents using a community-based participatory approach.
  • - Results showed significant improvements in self-reported diet quality (p = .025) among 61 couples and an increase in correct breastfeeding knowledge from 78% to 84% (p = .0009) among 89 participants after the intervention.
  • - Qualitative feedback highlighted the importance of involving both expecting mothers and fathers in nutrition and breastfeeding education to enhance maternal health outcomes during pregnancy.
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Computational models and eye-tracking research suggest that encoding variability accounts for the reduced recognition of targets (A) when paired with non-corresponding lures (B') relative to corresponding lures (A'). The current study examined whether neural activity during learning coincided with subsequent performance on the forced-choice Mnemonic Similarity Task (MST). Event-related potential responses were collected during encoding while young adults completed A-B' and A-A' trials of the forced-choice MST.

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Introduction: Racial/ethnic disparities in maternal mortality rates represent one of the most significant areas of disparities amongst all conventional population perinatal health measures in the U.S. The alarming trends and persistent disparities of outcomes by race/ethnicity and geographic location reinforce the need to focus on ensuring quality and safety of maternity care for all women.

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The remarkable efficacy of Epstein-Barr virus (EBV)-specific T cells for the treatment of posttransplant lymphomas has not been reproduced for EBV-positive (EBV+) malignancies outside the transplant setting. This is because of, in part, the heterogeneous expression and poor immunogenicity of the viral antigens expressed, namely latent membrane proteins 1 and 2, EBV nuclear antigen 1, and BamHI A rightward reading frame 1 (type-2 [T2] latency). However, EBV lytic cycle proteins are also expressed in certain EBV+ malignancies and, because several EBV lytic cycle proteins are abundantly expressed, have oncogenic activity, and likely contribute to malignancy, we sought and identified viral lytic-cycle transcripts in EBV+ Hodgkin lymphoma biopsies.

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Genital tucking (tucking) is the practice of hiding or minimizing the appearance of one's genitals and gonads. We aimed to better understand the prevalence of tucking and its potential effect on behavior and health. An online questionnaire was distributed to adults with a diagnosis of gender dysphoria or gender incongruence (n = 98).

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Many organisms can adjust their development according to environmental conditions, including the presence of conspecifics. Although this developmental plasticity is common in amphibians, its underlying molecular mechanisms remain largely unknown. Exposure during development to either 'cannibal cues' from older conspecifics, or 'alarm cues' from injured conspecifics, causes reduced growth and survival in cane toad () tadpoles.

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Invasive species offer insights into rapid adaptation to novel environments. The iconic cane toad () is an excellent model for studying rapid adaptation during invasion. Previous research using the mitochondrial NADH dehydrogenase 3 () gene in Hawai'ian and Australian invasive populations found a single haplotype, indicating an extreme genetic bottleneck following introduction.

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Background: Smoking remains the leading cause of preventable death, yet physicians inconsistently provide best-practices cessation advice to smokers. Point-of-care digital health tools can prompt and assist physicians to provide improved smoking cessation counseling. QuitAdvisorMD is a comprehensive web-based counseling and management digital health tool designed to guide smoking cessation counseling at the point-of-care.

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In an era of global climate change, biodiversity conservation is receiving increased attention. Conservation efforts are greatly aided by genetic tools and approaches, which seek to understand patterns of genetic diversity and how they impact species health and their ability to persist under future climate regimes. Invasive species offer vital model systems in which to investigate questions regarding adaptive potential, with a particular focus on how changes in genetic diversity and effective population size interact with novel selection regimes.

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By imposing novel selection pressures on both participants, biological invasions can modify evolutionary 'arms races' between hosts and parasites. A spatially replicated cross-infection experiment reveals strong spatial divergence in the ability of lungworms () to infect invasive cane toads () in Australia. In areas colonized for longer than 20 years, toads are more resistant to infection by local strains of parasites than by allopatric strains.

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Avian embryos develop in an egg composition which reflects both maternal condition and the recent environment of their mother. In birds, yolk corticosterone (CORT) influences development by impacting pre- and postnatal growth, as well as nestling stress responses and development. One possible mechanism through which maternal CORT may affect offspring development is via changes to offspring DNA methylation.

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AbstractTransitions from sexual to asexual reproduction have occurred in numerous lineages, but it remains unclear why asexual populations rarely persist. In facultatively parthenogenetic animals, all-female populations can arise when males are absent or become extinct, and such populations could help to understand the genetic and phenotypic changes that occur in the initial stages of transitions to asexuality. We investigated a naturally occurring spatial mosaic of mixed-sex and all-female populations of the facultatively parthenogenetic Australian phasmid .

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Human activities are accelerating rates of biological invasions and climate-driven range expansions globally, yet we understand little of how genomic processes facilitate the invasion process. Although most of the literature has focused on underlying phenotypic correlates of invasiveness, advances in genomic technologies are showing a strong link between genomic variation and invasion success. Here, we consider the ability of genomic tools and technologies to (i) inform mechanistic understanding of biological invasions and (ii) solve real-world issues in predicting and managing biological invasions.

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The efficacy of therapeutic T-cells is limited by a lack of positive signals and excess inhibitory signaling in tumor microenvironments. We previously showed that a constitutively active IL7 receptor (C7R) enhanced the persistence, expansion, and anti-tumor activity of T-cells expressing chimeric antigen receptors (CARs), and C7R-modified GD2.CAR T-cells are currently undergoing clinical trials.

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A species' success during the invasion of new areas hinges on an interplay between the demographic processes common to invasions and the specific ecological context of the novel environment. Evolutionary genetic studies of invasive species can investigate how genetic bottlenecks and ecological conditions shape genetic variation in invasions, and our study pairs two invasive populations that are hypothesized to be from the same source population to compare how each population evolved during and after introduction. Invasive European starlings (Sturnus vulgaris) established populations in both Australia and North America in the 19th century.

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Article Synopsis
  • Expanding cellular therapies for cancer has been difficult due to a lack of specific surface markers, prompting researchers to explore new methods for identifying these markers.
  • The study introduces a novel approach called 'structural surfaceomics', using cross-linking mass spectrometry to discover unique protein conformations on tumor cells that standard methods might miss.
  • Applying this technique to acute myeloid leukemia (AML), researchers identified a specific target, developed antibodies, and demonstrated that chimeric antigen receptor T cells can effectively eliminate AML cells while sparing normal cells, showing potential for broader applications in cancer therapy.
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Previous research suggests that mnemonic discrimination (i.e., the ability to discriminate between previously encountered and novel stimuli even when they are highly similar) improves substantially during childhood.

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