North Dakota State University

The History of Transposable Element Invasions in Drosophila melanogaster

As a fundamental biological principle, genomic information is typically transmitted vertically from parent to offspring. Occasionally, however, genetic material is transferred horizontally between species. Transposable elements (TEs) are frequently involved in such horizontal tra...

Who Do You Trust? Demographic Patterns in Vaccine Hesitancy among Older Adults in a Rural State

Older adults are at increased risk for complications from vaccine-preventable diseases, yet many remain undervaccinated. This study examined demographic variability in vaccination hesitancy among older adults in a rural state and the potentially mediating role of trust uncertaint...

Site-specific mechanical weeding robot with automatic self-adjustable individually controlled cultivator

Abstract Context Weeds significantly reduce crop productivity and profitability, particularly in sugar beet production where losses exceed $1.25 billion annually in the United States. Limitations of herbicide-based control and drawbacks of conventional tillage highlight the need...

Portfolio Optimization for Commodity ETFs Under Heavy-Tailed Returns

This paper examined whether portfolio-objective choice or forecasting complexity was more consequential in heavy-tailed commodity ETF allocation. Using daily Bloomberg data for 30 U.S.-listed commodity ETFs from 12 December 2018 to 16 December 2024, we compared historical and dyn...

DOF Transcription Factors: Regulatory Hubs Coordinating Plant Growth, Development and Stress Tolerance

Abstract Under global climate warming, plants evolve unique growth and developmental strategies to cope with frequent abiotic stresses. The plant-specific DNA-BINDING WITH ONE FINGER (DOF) transcription factors (TFs) originated in green algae and are phylogenetically divided into...

Sunflower Head Rot Diseases: Sclerotinia Head Rot

Head rotting diseases of sunflower are particularly destructive due to their direct impact on the tissues of the head (capitulum, receptacle), which may result in loss of yield and reduction in seed or flower quality. This article focuses on Sclerotinia head rot, caused by Sclero...

Establishment of Passenger Car Equivalent (PCE) Values for Urban Intersections Using Drones

Passenger Car Equivalent (PCE) factors are widely used to convert heterogeneous traffic streams into equivalent homogeneous flow rates for the design and analysis of roads and intersections. In developing countries, mixed traffic conditions differ substantially from those in deve...

Tramadol Co‐Administration with Oxycodone or Hydrocodone Increases Opioid Burden without Improving Postoperative Pain Control

Tramadol is frequently co-prescribed with oxycodone or hydrocodone after surgery under the assumption that its dual mechanism of action provides an opioid-sparing benefit. However, evidence supporting this practice is limited and inconsistent. We conducted a secondary analysis of...

A task-aligned multimodal machine learning framework for studying working memory dysfunction in Parkinson’s disease

<title>Abstract</title> Cognitive impairment is one of the most functionally debilitating non-motor symptoms in Parkinson's disease (PD). Yet, current diagnostic and clinical practices rely heavily on subjective assessments and burdensome behavioral testing, which lack the tempor...

Prompt Engineering of Large Language Models for Medication Dose Calculation

This study aims to design and validate a large language model (LLM) framework for systematic extraction of medication dosing across multiple therapeutic classes using electronic health record (EHR) data. Manual dose annotations were completed for 4295 medications across nine ther...

First-principles identification of optically efficient erbium centers in GaAs

Gallium arsenide (GaAs) doped with erbium (Er), a material of interest for optoelectronics and quantum information, has been studied for decades. Yet the formation of Er luminescence centers in the semiconductor host and their properties are still not well understood. Here we pre...