The sequence stratigraphy of Middle to Upper Pennsylvanian strata in the Appalachian Basin is complex, partly owing to the icehouse co-response to climate and sea level change during the late Paleozoic. The Breathitt Group resembles a traditional marine-to-terrestrial sequence stratigraphic model. The overlying Conemaugh Group also exhibits sequences, but they are more fluvial-dominated. Sequence stratigraphy largely presumes sea-level drive for sequences and accommodation. We present a model that is driven by both sea level and climate. We hypothesize that once the land surface is built up high enough above the water table, it is not required that sea level drop to induce valley incision, and in fact there is no evidence for a shelf slope break that would promote incision. Instead, we offer that climate change may be the main driver of valley incision.
This model is tested using strata in the Breathitt and Conemaugh Groups in the Northern and Central Appalachian Basin. Measured sections along a basin cross section in outcrop and 3D models built from UAV photographs help reveal this past environment to address the potential of climate change as a sequence driver.
The Breathitt to Conemaugh Group shift records a composite of sequences that are a progradational basin-fill and define a switch from a mixed marine and fluvial to fluvial fill. The Conemaugh sequences record upward shifts from a low-accommodation, valley-incised tributive to a high-accommodation, un-incised distributive systems tract. As a marine transgression tops the low-accommodation valleys below, it lays a basal peat which floods the tributive system. Next, the rivers in the distributive fluvial system prograde and push out the shore, as well as build a slope above sea level. This aggradation creates an elevated coastal prism. Continued progradation creates the elevation needed for valley incision, but this progradation need not cause incision, even if sea level falls. A climate change will eventually spur water table reduction owing to a locally drier climate, or an upstream water-sediment ratio change. Valley incision begins at that time, and possibly with no change in sea level. In this model, regression with or without sea level drop sets up the conditions needed for valley incision, but does not cause incision itself. Incision waits for adequate climate change to generate buffer valleys. The valleys record regression but are climate driven and do not have to define sea-level change.

Public awareness of human rights violations in cobalt-rich mines of the Democratic Republic of Congo have American cobalt consumers scrambling for reliable suppliers to meet rising demand, with uncertainties about futures in cobalt's supply chain. Global cobalt production supply forecast falls short of global demand forecast for the next ten years, even with the completions of major planned mined projects. The exponential increase in demand for cobalt results from its utility in personal electronics batteries, electric vehicle batteries, and jet engine construction. Chemical extracting operations whose sole purposes are to extract cobalt are not profitable in the status quo, leaving a window of opportunity for reclaimed cobalt to take hold in the market. This project studies consumer patterns to determine "urban mine" qualities in Texas. The resulting analysis exists to be cross-applied to other states to determine target regions best suited for cobalt reclamation strategies in hopes of securing America's geopolitical mineral stability.

Due to the logistical challenges and the dynamic nature of fluvial systems, studying modern point bar deposits over formative time periods is difficult. Seasonal and annual changes in precipitation can greatly influence the rate at which deposition is recorded. The lack of accurate sediment-package dating makes it difficult to compare sedimentation rates to actual chronostratigraphic events such as floods. This study combines photogrammetry, mapped surface migration, a survey of sediment elevation change, a trench, and water discharge rates to develop a more complete understanding of how a point bar forms on an annual scale. The Powder River, Montana, USA, which has little influence from engineering, offers a unique opportunity to study a seasonally exposed point bar and how its internal architecture and surface features form through time.
The study area is along the Powder River between Moorhead, Montana, USA, and Broadus, Montana, USA. The Powder River is a northward flowing, meandering river that is sourced from the Bighorn Mountains in northeast Wyoming, USA and is a tributary to the Yellowstone River. Point bar PR141A, the focus of this study, is the result of the neck cut-off of point bar PR141 during a 50 year flood in 1978. The sediment elevation survey is conducted annually, with a few exceptions, at centimeter scale to determine sediment elevation change and the building and erosion of the point bar. The survey is applied to the architectural-element analysis of the sediment packages within the point bar to compare time with sediment deposition.
This study reconstructs the growth of point bar PR141A, its discrete accretionary architecture at the scale of years, and determines the inter-relationship between annual flooding events and bar accretion. The sediment survey timeline shows that on average the river builds one accretionary body per yearly flood cycle. On occasion, the river builds multiple bodies during the year or can take several years to build one accretion set. The change in the accretion set building period is attributed to changes in river flow. The continual change of deposit direction, grain size distribution, erosion, and reshaping of the bar surface between accretion events leads to fragmentation of the point bar body, vastly different from the textbook model of a point bar. The detailed study of how a modern point bar forms lends insight into the fragmentation of fluvial hydrocarbon reservoir bodies.

The Eagle Ford Shale (EFS) was deposited on the South Texas Shelf in the Late Cretaceous, during a time of widespread marine transgression. With industry interest in the EFS, an understanding of the geology and depositional environment of these rocks is imperative to maximize well results. For the study, a section of the EFS was measured and described in detail in Heath Canyon, Brewster County, Texas. Lithostratigraphy, biostratigraphy, and mechanical stratigraphy were determined via outcrop and elemental composition was determined from sample collection and lab analysis. Data suggests the EFS was deposited in a potentially anoxic environment below storm-wave base on the South Texas Shelf.

Quantifying source-to-sink sediment flux for stratigraphic systems is critical for accurate basin models, but all available methods are hampered by low precision and most require data not readily attained by common subsurface studies. The Fulcrum approach uses the variables of channel bankfull thickness and grain size to calculate sediment bankfull discharge and converts this to an annual sediment volume. The Fulcrum approach uses commonly collected data but similarly yields only approximate flux estimates. In order to calculate a more precise source-to-sink estimate for long basin durations, the amount of time the fluvial systems runs at bankfull flow and the annual proportion of sediment discharged during this bankfull flow must also be determined. By categorizing fluvial systems by attributes such as drainage area and paleoclimate at the time of discharge, a more specified and accurate bankfull flow duration and total bankfull sediment discharge is estimated. We constructed a database that stores and categorizes these data and a user interface (RAFTER: River Analogue and Fulcrum Transport Estimates Repository) to query and display this data. Daily stream gauge data spanning decades is used in conjunction with measured bankfull values from literature to populate the datasets for the database and derive stream specific data attributes. This bankfull flux searchable database evaluates stream gauge data for modern fluvial systems according to classes such as climate setting and is also a useful tool for identifying analog stream data scaled to drainage basin and channel size. It evaluates designated parameters of days within a year that the river runs at bankfull flow, as well as the yearly proportion of sediment discharged over bankfull duration. The database can thus yield a more accurate value for duration at bankfull flow and sediment discharge at bankfull from modern rivers that can be used as an analog for stratigraphic rivers with interpreted climate and size parameters. Results show a key breakdown in bankfull duration, with arid and tropical rivers on the order of a fraction of a day per year, boreal climates tending to be an order of magnitude longer, and temperate climates still longer. Categorizing stratigraphic rivers by known climate and other parameters can lower the total error in sediment flux from paleohydrology by a geometric factor.

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is a progressive brain disorder and the most common form of dementia. The disease gradually destroys brain cells, leading to confusion, erratic behavior, and severe loss of memory. Alzheimer’s is eventually fatal, and no treatment or cure has been discovered. Researchers aim to better understand Alzheimer’s pathology through the use of a transgenic mouse model of AD, the 5xFAD mice. A previous study by Bonardi et al. (2011) has shown that another model of AD, the APP/PS1 mouse, exhibits a deficit in extinction learning before it displays a deficit in acquisition. We aim to determine if this same trend exists in 5xFAD mice, despite having more extensive genetic mutations. Learning will be assessed using the Contextual Fear Conditioning (CFC) paradigm, where the mice are introduced to an environmental context and experience a mild aversive stimulus. When reintroduced to the context 24 hours later, mice will freeze if they acquired a memory for the pairing of an aversive stimulus with the novel context. Freezing is an instinctive rodent fear response. After repeated trials of exposure to the environment in the absence of an aversive stimulus, the mice gradually freeze less. This is indicative of new learning of the environment no longer being paired with the stimulus, or extinction of the initial association. The 5xFAD mice typically exhibit impaired acquisition by 6 months of age as compared to wild type mice. The present study examined if the 5xFAD mice would display a deficit in extinction learning prior to this deficit in acquisition. Preliminary data indicate that 5xFAD mice, like APP/PS1 mice, show a deficit in memory extinction before they exhibit a loss of memory acquisition. Three-month old FAD mice extinguish more slowly than three-month old wild type mice, but show no difference in acquisition. This research is important because it indicates alternative cognitive measures may allow for earlier diagnosis of neurodegenerative diseases, such as AD.

It is estimated that 45% of people over the age of 85 in the U.S. suffer from Alzheimer’s disease. Patients with Alzheimer’s disease, which is characterized by cognitive deficiencies and memory loss, have higher concentrations of amyloid plaques in brain tissue than patients without the disease. Abnormal levels of transition metal ions Fe, Zn, and Cu in brain tissue are associated with amyloid beta plaques and also have been shown to catalyze the generation of excess reactive oxygen species (ROS) and cause oxidative stress. The combination of the ROS generation and the amyloid plaque formation results in neurodegeneration, which ultimately causes the memory loss and ultimate death associated with Alzheimer’s. We have synthesized the compounds L2 and L4 which are designed to be chelating agents of metal ions and also scavengers of ROS. We hypothesize that due to their chelating properties and pyridol groups, L2 and L4 should reduce oxidative damage in neuronal cells by chelating metal ions and scavenging radicals. Furthermore, we hypothesize that due to its extra pyridol group, L4 will be a stronger antioxidant than L2. The cytotoxicity of the compounds was tested on HT-22 neuronal cells. Neuronal cells will be treated with BSO, a compound that induces formation of ROS, in the presence and absence of L2 and L4. If our hypothesis is correct, our compounds should reduce the oxidative damage induced by BSO, and L4 should be more effective at doing so than L2.

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is a neurodegenerative condition in which beta-amyloid protein accumulates into plaques, and tau protein forms neurofibrillary tangles. In the past, our laboratory has shown that repeated inflammatory events increase beta-amyloid in the hippocampus of male C57BL6/J mice. We sought to determine the effect of a second exposure to the bacterial mimetic lipopolysaccharide (LPS) on beta amyloid accumulation. An initial round of seven, once daily LPS or sterile saline injections, was administered to male C57BL6/J adult mice. Fourteen days after the last injection, a second round of LPS or saline injections was given, followed by tissue collection and quantification of beta-amyloid levels in the hippocampus. The results showed that animals injected with two rounds of LPS had significantly lower levels of beta-amyloid accumulation than those animals injected with just a single round of LPS, although both groups had significantly higher levels of beta-amyloid than the saline control animals. These results suggest a reduced inflammatory response following a secondary exposure to LPS. More specifically, animals exposed to LPS for a second time showed significantly less central and peripheral inflammation four hours after LPS administration than animals with no prior exposure. In addition, increased levels of IgM and IgG were discovered in the mice with prior LPS exposure. This could indicate possible antibody production against LPS or beta-amyloid rather than tolerance of the LPS as a mechanism for the reduced inflammatory response. In order to establish whether this results in a life-long effect, we are currently exploring the impact of LPS administration in old age for mice who were exposed to LPS earlier in life.

With the increasing student population trend at TCU, parking on campus is equally increasing
in difficulty. Due to the limited campus space, expanding parking availability is not a feasible
solution. Spark is a smart parking system that monitors the status of each space in parking lots,
indicating the space’s occupancy status on an aerial “Google Maps” view of the parking lot in a
smartphone application and, potentially, a website. The application could be linked to the TCU
Single-Sign-On for increased security and to make it easier for TCU students, faculty, and staff
to save their parking preferences. Spark can measure the fill rate of individual lots, recommend
a time-to-leave to procure a parking spot, and even provide update notifications on the status
of the user’s preferred lots.

Understanding of the wound healing process can be used to make more tailor-made medicine and to determine the nature of this healing process. In this research we use MATLAB software along with the ADI method to solve a partial differential equation that models wound healing by treating keratin as a diffusion process. A significant hurdle to overcome is finding the appropriate initial conditions, that is to accurately extract boundary data from photos taken with different equipment, lighting, or resolution.