Background: Cervical disc herniations (CDH) commonly occur between the ages of 51 and 60. Research suggests that less than 2% of patients with CDH were male and between the age of 20-29. The NFL reported 9 cases of CDH, from a singular traumatic event between 2001 and 2011. This case study examines a collegiate-aged male, a demographic not commonly associated with CDH. The typical presentation of CDH includes neck pain with unilateral numbness and tingling. CDH in young healthy adults is unusual and the clinical presentation, in this case, differs from what is commonly reported. This patient had no neurological symptoms.

Intervention or Treatment: Initial intervention included, passive ROM, massage, and traction. Working with both a physical therapist and the athletic training staff. A soft collar was provided to help support the neck, as well as cyclobenzaprine and Toradol to help with pain and spasm. Post-MRI and X-ray a soft cervical collar and passive range of motion treatment were all that was provided. Surgery included a single-level fusion at C3/4, with an anterior plate and a spacer. The athlete was told approximately 6 months of rehabilitation would be needed before returning to play. This would allow the athlete to return for spring football.

Outcomes: Complete resolution of signs and symptoms occurred following anterior discectomy and fusion of the C3/4-disc herniation. Return to sports post-surgery for a C3/C4 CDH.

Conclusions: Cervical disc herniation in young males rarely occurs. Additionally, presentation, in this case, was atypical with no neurological deficits. Imaging was warranted to achieve the correct diagnosis and treatment.

Clinical Bottom Line: This patient’s case may provide further insight into atypical clinical presentations of CDH. A typical presentation of neurological deficits was not evident in this case. This case can also present insight into the return to play process at the collegiate level, following a CDH.

Bioarchaeological research has played a significant role in understanding the Casas Grandes region in northern Mexico. Excavations at the archaeological sites of Convento and Paquimé in Chihuahua, Mexico recovered at least 652 burials dating to AD 700-1450, providing a robust skeletal population for investigations, including research on population demographics, patterns of violence, and social stratification. While there is extensive literature on these individuals, research focusing solely on subadults is nonexistent. This study employs genetic sex-typing using real-time PCR followed by high-resolution melting analysis, as well as strontium isotopic analysis on subadult remains from both Convento and Paquimé to provide estimations of biological sex and migration status. The resulting information is used to address key issues of mobility and social organization. The integration of research of subadults with those of adults is necessary for a better understanding of past societies, and aids particularly in understanding the pre-Hispanic Casas Grandes perception of childhood, violence, and social stratification.

This project will develop and introduce novel methods for the separation and analysis of enantiomers. Chiral separation of enantiomers is crucial in the area of drug development where two enantiomers of a compound can have varying effects as pharmaceuticals. Many pharmaceutical compounds or targets are chiral, with each enantiomer producing different biological responses in humans. For this reason, the Food and Drug Administration requires that each enantiomer of a chiral pharmaceutical be isolated and analyzed. Analytical and preparative scale chiral separations are thus critically important.

Chiral compounds have virtually identical chemical and physical properties, meaning separating their enantiomers for analysis is very difficult. Capillary electrophoresis (CE) and electrokinetic chromatographic (EKC) methods utilizing chiral additives have demonstrated significant advantages over conventional methods for analytical scale enantiomer separations. The use of chiral pseudostationary phases in EKC can allow for highly efficient and selective separations of chiral molecules due to stronger interaction of the pseudostationary phase (PSP) with one enantiomer over the other. A chiral polymer of N-Acetyl-Glucosamine generated by controlled polymerization will be characterized and used as the PSP in CE.

Polymeric PSPs have been demonstrated to provide excellent separation performance and compatibility with a broad range of solvent systems and detectors. Chiral additives have been demonstrated to provide rapid and efficient separations of enantiomers by CE. To date, no chiral polymeric PSPs of this type have been investigated for chiral separations in CE.

Implementing a chiral PSP into the background electrolyte of CE for chiral separation and analysis can help ease the drug discovery process where analysis of potential drugs with chiral centers is required. This method would also allow other forms of chiral analysis in chemistry to be done in an easier fashion than previous methods.

Peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor gamma (PPARγ) is a promising target for the treatment of type 2 diabetes because activating this receptor improves insulin sensitivity and helps manage glucose levels in patients. However, currently approved drugs that activate this receptor have side effects, such as weight gain, weakening of bones, and cardiac failure, which have limited or halted their use. The goal of my study is to compare computational methods that estimate the binding affinity of compounds to PPARγ. To achieve this, I will estimate the binding affinities of compounds that have published experimental binding affinities to determine if the estimated binding affinities correlate with the experimental binding affinities. The computational methods I will evaluate include free energy perturbation, docking, and a modified docking method that incorporates a minimization step. Each method has its own advantages and disadvantages, such as allowing movement of the compound within a rigid receptor or movement of both the receptor and compound, but the latter requires significant computational resources. The use of computational methods to estimate binding affinities of compounds to proteins will reduce the number of compounds that need to be synthesized and screened to discover new drug candidates that target a protein, in this case, PPARγ.

The fundamental question of geophysics is simple: What is inside the Earth? Because we cannot physically travel there, we rely on indirect methods such as mapping the strength of Earth’s gravity or studying how fast earthquakes travel through Earth’s layers. Most of our knowledge of Earth structure comes measuring the two earthquake velocity, the pressure-wave velocity and shear-wave velocity. In order to turn these two velocities into material parameters such as density, shear modulus, and modulus, we need to make assumptions about Earth structure. These assumptions come in the form of scaling and combining the velocities to recover the elastic moduli. Not only does this step introduce uncertainty, but there is a fundamental flaw in using two parameters to calculate three: the three parameters are not independent of each other. In the crust and upper mantle, seismic methods cannot separate variations in density and elastic moduli. We need an independent method to separate the variations in Earth structure.

How Earth’s surface responds to a load is intrinsically a function of Earth’s structure. If we know the details of a loads and how much Earth’s surface moves in response to that load, we can solve for density, bulk modulus, and shear modulus. GNSS stations (the global terms for GPS stations) continuously measure the movement of Earth’s surface and have sub-millimeter accuracy. Ocean tides are extremely well studies and load Earth’s surface on the order of centimeters near shorelines and even move Earth’s surface as far inland as Missoula, MT. In our study, we use this ocean tidal loading to invert for Earth structure. We compare forward models of ocean tidal loading to GNSS measurements for the western United States and update a 2011 study.

Background: The foot contains two sesamoid bones including a medial tibial sesamoid and lateral fibular sesamoid bone, in which both are embedded in the plantar ligament beneath the first metatarsal head. Medial sesamoid fractures are rare and are often misdiagnosed. Radiographs may be inconclusive because a bipartite sesamoid may be present (sesamoid bone is naturally divided into two segments). Sesamoid fractures usually occur due to forced hyperextension of the great toe and metatarsophalangeal (MTP) joint. Sesamoid fractures are often missed on initial diagnosis because the clinical presentation is similar to a turf toe injury. Pain in the ball of the foot and first metatarsophalangeal joint, swelling, and limited plantarflexion/dorsiflexion are common clinical signs of a sesamoid fracture.

Patient: A 21-year-old male division one collegiate football athlete was initially diagnosed with turf toe. The athlete complained of persistent pain with activities that required pushing off after their foot was stepped on while running during a drill. Initial clinical examination showed no signs of deformity, structural trauma or abnormalities. After failed management, MRI imaging was obtained, which revealed a medial sesamoid fracture and partial tearing of the flexor hallucis tendons.

Intervention or Treatment: After the initial diagnosis, conservative management consisted of rehabilitation exercises and turf toe taping techniques. Activity modification, total rest, and the use of anti-inflammatories were also utilized. When these strategies did not effectively manage the condition, metal plated inserts were added to the athlete’s shoes to increase rigidity. Eventually after the sesamoid fracture diagnosis, surgical resection of the fractured sesamoid and repair of the flexor hallucis tendons was performed.

Outcomes: Complete resolution of signs and symptoms occurred following surgical resection of fractured sesamoid and surgical repair of torn flexor tendons.

Conclusions: Medial tibial sesamoid fractures rarely occur. Conservative management may not always be effective and surgical interventions, such as resection or screw fixation have been described. Successful return to sport and improved patient function have been reported in literature following surgical intervention.

Clinical Bottom Line: Medial tibial sesamoid bone fractures are rare and commonly missed on diagnosis. Radiographs may not detect the fracture, therefore other imaging, such as MRI or CT scan, may be warranted to accurately assess the injury.

Air pollution and PM_2.5 from wildfire smoke have steadily increased over the last decade despite decreasing anthropogenic emissions. The increase in wildfires in the western US has highlighted the need to understand better how wildfire-specific PM_2.5 affects human health. To support health risk assessment studies from wildfire smoke inhalation, differentiating between wildfire-specific PM_2.5 and non-wildfire-specific PM_2.5 is essential. We used PM_2.5 data developed by Swanson et al. and three different methods to isolate wildfire-specific PM_2.5. The PM_2.5 data uses air quality station observations, Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer, aerosol optical thickness data, and meteorological data to produce daily 1-km resolution PM_2.5 concentration estimates for the 11 western US states from 2003-2021. The three methods we used to isolate wildfire-specific PM_2.5 are (i) extraction from maps based on wildfire season window, (ii) top-down approach used satellite National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Hazard Mapping System smoke plume data, extracted to the corresponding PM_2.5 values within these polygon spatial layers and filter ambient PM_2.5 through a two-stage regression model, (iii) combined both mentioned methods for a spatiotemporal approach by first temporally defining a wildfire season window and then extracted spatial locations with smoke plume data. To determine which of these models was most informative and valid, we compared and contrasted, producing summary statistics for each. Our results suggest that depending on the variables used in estimating wildfire-specific PM_2.5, there are many variabilities, highlighting potential problems with study accuracy. Many studies that have connected wildfire-specific PM_2.5 and human health effects have devised methods for differentiating PM_2.5. Various methods and results make it challenging to determine the actual population-level burden due to wildfire-specific PM_2.5. The results of our study highlight the need for more in-depth studies showing the impacts of PM_2.5 on public health, as policies may need to be adapted based on the emission source.

Regional seismic stations are distributed sparsely throughout Montana. The thin dispersion of stations inhibits the evaluation of aftershock evolutions following a larger earthquake, as well as hinders the ability to record low magnitude events. To account for these limitations, a dense concentration of seismic stations from the University of Montana, Montana Bureau of Mines and Geology, and the USGS were specifically deployed around the area of the 2017 Lincoln, MT earthquake. With a magnitude of 5.8, this event was one of the largest earthquakes in Montana’s history. In years following the mainshock, a sequence of aftershocks have occurred along adjacent faults subparallel to the mainshock. I hypothesize that many of these events went unnoticed, because their magnitudes were too low for distant seismic stations to detect them. The absence of these events in current catalogs may lead to misinterpretations or incomplete interpretations of the fault mechanics, geometry, and behavior of active faults in west-central Montana, as well as conceal evidence of re-activated faults, or faults not mapped due to a lack of surficial evidence.

To accomplish this objective, the continuous seismic data that was collected by these stations will be processed through a software called QuakeMigrate (QM). QM will siphon through the recorded events, determine which events are likely to be real earthquakes, based on a series of user specified parameters, and output the approximate epicenter, depth, magnitude, and degree of uncertainty for each event. Further analysis of this data will provide input for determining the spatial and temporal patterns of aftershocks, the type of deformation associated with each event, and provide evidence that supports or refutes the current understanding of the underlying mechanics in west-central Montana.

In an increasingly volatile world, it is paramount to successfully navigate turbulence. The COVID-19 pandemic (March 2020) emphasized the need to enhance educators’ responsiveness. Exploring and understanding the experiences of the school leaders who established new schools, in Central and Eastern European countries, after the Fall of the Berlin Wall (November 1989), and continued leading them to this day, will increase knowledge about effective responses to turbulence. The purpose of this study will be to investigate the lived experiences of the visionary school leaders who created new private and independent schools in the post-Soviet period, and to reveal common threads. Through the investigation of school leaders’ experiences a more cohesive understanding of educational leadership will emerge. Our research will use a descriptive phenomenological strategy of inquiry, guided by the central question: How do successful educational leaders navigate extreme turbulence? The study will be delimited to school leaders that established their schools from 1990s and continued to lead their schools though the COVID-19 pandemic to the present. Participants will be individuals who have, by virtue of their experience, the potential and ability to inform their understanding of school leadership in turbulence, in a number that falls within the recommended range (5-to-25) for a phenomenological study. The researcher will conduct individual semi-structured and open-ended interviews with participants, lasting approximately one hour, via ZOOM. By analyzing, describing, and presenting the shared experiences and knowledge of those who created and maintained schools in Central and Eastern Europe from the 1990s to this day, this study will provide original valuable insight for educators facing extreme turbulence. Our study’s significance lies in the opportunity to revisit past experiences, and to contemplate successful and unsuccessful attempts to navigate turbulence. Assembling perspectives and experiences through reflection can help to deepen and expand our understanding of educational leadership.

Infectious diseases contribute to high mortality rates across the world. Vaccines provide promising protection against rapid mutating pathogens that induce disease, such as influenza. Vaccines activate the innate immune system with initial exposure to a specific pathogen or pathogen subunit, therefore improving the adaptive immune system by eliciting a more selective response when naturally exposed. Adjuvants can be added for a more specific immune response by targeting specific receptors, such as Toll-like receptors (TLRs). Activation of TLRs lead to downstream effects including activation of NF-kB and production of inflammatory cytokines, such as IL-1β. However, TLRs have a broad function making them not ideal candidates to target for a specific immune response. The IL-1 receptor (IL-1R) is a potential target for adjuvant stimulation due to its specificity as it is activated by endogenous IL-1β. IL-1β has been considered for an adjuvant for vaccines, however expenses and autoimmunity against IL-1β discouraged further development. Therefore, there is a need for small molecule adjuvants that stimulate the immune system specifically to provide long-term, specific defenses against various strains of a pathogen. This work uses organic and biochemical strategies to study a lead molecule, identified through highthroughput screening, which has been screened for the IL-1 pathway, and could provide insight as to how this immunomodulator stimulates the IL-1 pathway.

Within the realm of forensic anthropology when analyzing a set of remains for identification, analysis parameters with results provide four main categories: European, African, Asian, or mixed ancestry. Some software such as FORDISC may include other groups such as Guatemalan, but they still seem centered on the 3 main groupings of European, African, or Asian. These groupings are from a history of being focused on attributing “race” to individuals and coloring everything through a lens of “superiority”. Peoples of India's skeletal remains when analyzed depict features associated with Europeans, Africans, and Asians causing them to be labeled many times as having mixed ancestry. Researchers with experience may identify them correctly but not always. A review of many studies coming out of India sees Peoples of India population-specific studies with some statistic formulas being developed for the purpose of analysis. Genetic analysis shows Peoples of India aside from Africans as being the most genetically diverse. This study focuses on craniometric analysis using statistics to show if there is a significant difference between Asian populations and populations from India. Preliminary statistical results show a significant difference between Asian populations and the Peoples of India populations represented within the dataset constructed for this study. Does this mean these populations are part of another ancestral group or are significantly different enough to be a separate category unto themselves?

Sand Tray Therapy as an intervention method in School Counseling

Sand tray therapy can be defined as a type of play therapy which has roots in various counseling approaches including Jungian and Humanistic orientations. It has been identified as a dynamic form of expressive psychotherapy where the client can express their intra and interpersonal world and issues using the creative process to communicate them (Homeyer and Sweeny, 2011).

As expressive art therapy has expanded from the therapeutic setting into other environments sand tray has become more accepted and more utilized as a school counseling intervention, particularly in the areas of trauma, recovering from natural disasters and career awareness. School counselors may benefit from having a sand tray available for students in their office and should therefore have basic skills training on how to implement this intervention. In Expressive Arts Interventions for School Counselors (2014), Suneetha B. Manyam writes about a developed sand tray activity for special needs groups within the school setting which aligns with the ASCA (American School Counseling Association) professional standards. Students may increase prosocial behavior through both the creation and the sharing of the sand tray they create.

This poster presentation will include an overview and introduction to the benefits of sand tray therapy as an expressive arts tool in a school setting. This presentation will build on developed interventions and prepare school counselors to understand sand tray, including a historical overview of the approach. Additionally, resources will be provided for counselors who want to implement sand tray as part of their school counseling programming.

As expressive approaches to counseling continue to gain traction in the field, counseling training programs should offer exposure to these approaches, including Sand tray. Foundational concepts will help establish best practices for counselors who are interested in this approach and may seek out further training.

Our immune system depends on innate cells that carry pattern recognition receptors (PRRs) to recognize and respond against infection. PRRs detect damage-associated molecular patterns from damaged or dying cells, and pathogen-associated molecular patterns (PAMPs) – small molecular patterns of microbes such as β-glucans from fungi. This research delves into the exploration of one PRR, dendritic cell-associated C-type lectin-1 (Dectin-1) and its agonists β-glucans, the PAMPs. Dectin-1 is a key player in anti-fungal defense, and recently discovered as a critical component in immunity against diseases of bacteria, viruses, and certain cancers. β-glucans have been shown to modulate immunity through their polymer length, degree of branching, and their supramolecular structure, however the mechanism of recognition and the agonist properties are poorly understood. To signal Dectin-1 it has been hypothesized that efficient agonist presentation is critical, specifically: (i) β-glucan particle size, (ii) particle superstructure, in particular helical conformations, and (iii) β-glucan chain length and branching. Herein, this proposal seeks to elucidate critical components of activation of Dectin-1 through rational design, formulation, and evaluation of novel polysaccharide dendrimers. To achieve this goal, multiple libraries will be synthesized: polysaccharide functionalized nanoparticles, and trivalent and multivalent dendrimer families bearing a reactive group that selectively reacts with the reducing end of saccharides of glucose, laminarihexose, and lentinan. Dectin-1 activation and mechanism of action will be assessed via appropriate biological assays (e.g. RAW 264.7 cells, human PBMCs, HEK reporter cell lines). Lead β-glucan scaffolds chosen for the best cytokine production in vitro will be further investigated by being formulated onto nanoparticles. When successful, this will help lay the foundation of the specifics of Dectin-1 activation and lead to an advancement in therapeutics.

This project sought to understand the struggles currently faced with the repatriation of human remains using the United States and NAGPRA as the basis for understanding the cultural conflicts associated with the process. The use of DNA in repatriation is a widely discussed and argued topic in bioarcheology today and the ethical ambiguity is a contentious matter for government institutions, tribal authorities, cultural managers, and communities throughout the world. To some cultures the use of DNA analysis, which by design are invasive procedure, is a further invasion that goes against their cultural foundations. Excluding the views of the collection of DNA for purely evidence acquisition, which is common for academic stakeholders, there are Indigenous cultures that agree that the repatriation process is further aided using DNA when human remains are unprovenanced. This project examined the foundations of two groups, tribal communities, and scientific researchers, in the debate of using genomic techniques for repatriation. It also reviews genetic workshops that are currently being implemented to create a dialogue that allows for further genomic testing on unprovenanced human remains using Indigenous perspectives.

With a reported number of over 8,000 individual sets of human remains unidentified in the United States, improved methods are necessary to collect and accurately extract DNA from human bone while being minimally destructive. Methods are not standardized for where on the skeletal remains to collect bone samples and often result in sampling far more material than is needed.

The molecular yields observed in trabecular and cortical bone samples taken from human remains could help determine what sample types are needed for successful DNA analysis. With a hypothesis stating that due to the structure of trabecular bone, samples that contain only the trabecular bone yield higher amounts of DNA molecules than samples taken from cortical bone, this project took the preliminary steps in improving DNA sampling and extraction methods by analyzing the yield of Y-chromosome DNA from the two bone types.

This project sampled 40 locations throughout the skeleton from each bone type and subjected them to quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) analysis. The results contradict the hypothesis and indicate that cortical bone samples yield higher amounts of DNA than trabecular.

The data collected from this project has provided a steppingstone to improve methods of DNA sampling of human skeletal remains. The data could be used not only to improve methods in forensic contexts but could be used for military identifications, ancestry estimations for potentially Indigenous remains, etc. Further research is needed to increase the validity of the results and affect the current methods used in the field.