Tag: Halmos College of Arts and Sciences

Darnella McGuire-Nelson

Darnella McGuire-Nelson, doctoral student in the Department of Conflict Resolution Studies (DCRS) in the Halmos College of Arts and Sciences and the Guy Harvey Oceanographic Research Center (HCAS), appeared in an article in the NY Times regarding the Novavax vaccine and clinical trials in the Black community. The article is entitled, “After a Rocky Start, Novavax Vaccine Could Be Here by Summer.”

McGuire-Nelson works at the US Patent and Trademark Office and heard about the clinical trials on the radio. In addition to what was included in the article, she added:

I would like to include that when going through the pre-screening process, I knew more about the research process than I thought thanks to Nova. Because I am preparing my submission to the IRB, I was able to articulate my concerns and questions before I signed the consent form.  I had so many questions, that the Principal Investigator met with me personally to address my concerns.   I had no clue that I was the first participant to sign up for the study.  I am now using this platform to inform Black communities to get vaccinated, as COVID-19 is affecting Black and Hispanic populations at disproportionate rates. I also have been asked by the Alexandria Health Department to serve as an ambassador for helping to get the word out to Black communities in the city of the importance of getting vaccinated.  Their apprehension is from the historical context of Blacks being subjected to unethical experiments by the U.S. Government.  I believe it is important for health officials to acknowledge these atrocities, listen to understand our concerns and apprehensions, and educate the community on the process and laws put in place to prevent unethical research. For me, I see my participation in this clinical trial as my contribution in moving science forward for my Black community.  If Blacks are not represented in clinical trials, how will we know if vaccines or therapies will work?

To read the article, please go to https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/03/health/vaccine-novavax.html

This fall, HCAS Chemistry faculty member Maria Ballester, Ph.D. was lead author of an article entitled, “Protonation of Planar and Nonplanar Porphyrins: A Calorimetric and Computational Study”. Published in the Journal of Physical Chemistry A, this article reported the first calorimetric study of the diprotonation of a series of planar and nonplanar free-base porphyrins, coupled with a DFT investigation of the enthalpies of diprotonation.

This researcher was supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health and the Johnson Research Foundation. Computations were performed using the computational resource at the Department of Biochemistry of Biophysics (UPenn).

Judith McKay, J.D.

Judith McKay, J.D., Ph.D., Ph.D., faculty in the Department of Conflict Resolution Studies (DCRS) in the Halmos College of Arts and Sciences and the Guy Harvey Oceanographic Research Center (HCAS) gave a presentation with alumna Michelle Finneran, Ph.D., at the 2020 Association for Conflict Resolution Annual Conference held in the fall. The conference was held virtually, and the theme was “Conflict & Justice in an Era of Polarization.” Their presentation was entitled, “Intimate Partner Violence and the Impact on Conflict Resolution Practice.”

Finneran received her doctoral degree from DCRS and is a therapist in private practice in Coral Springs.

McKay is the Director of the Ph.D. program and faculty advisor to the Social Justice Roundtable and works with students in the community through Community Resolution Services, a practicum and volunteer site for DCRS. CRS hosts Story Café, We Love our Families series, The Women’s Roundtable, and is involved in offering workshops, training for the Crisis Intervention Teams, and other events for community groups and organizations. Her scholarly interests include conflict coaching, mediation, strategic community planning, and prevention and intervention in family, neighborhood, and organizational violence.  For more information about CRS events and how we can partner with your group, free to contact McKay at mckayj@nova.edu.

Extinct dire wolves split off from other wolves nearly six million years ago and were only a distant relative of today’s wolves, according to new research published in Nature (January, 2021). Dire wolves, made famous in the TV show Game of Thrones, were common across North America until around 13,000 years ago, after which they went extinct.

The study shows that dire wolves were so different from other canine species like coyotes and grey wolves that they were not able to breed with each other. Previous analyses, based on morphology alone, had led scientists to believe that dire wolves were closely related to grey wolves.

Halmos College biology faculty member Andrew Ozga, Ph.D. was one of the 49 researchers across nine countries who analyzed the genomes of dire wolves alongside those of many different wolf-like canid species. Their analyses suggest that unlike many canid species who apparently migrated repeatedly between North America and Eurasia over time, dire wolves evolved solely in North America for millions of years.

Although dire wolves overlapped with coyotes and grey wolves in North America for at least 10,000 years before their extinction, they found no evidence that they interbred with these species. The researchers suggest that their deep evolutionary differences meant that they were likely ill equipped to adapt to changing conditions at the end of the ice age.

The dire wolf is one of the most famous prehistoric carnivores from Pleistocene America which became extinct around 13,000 years ago. Known scientifically as Canis dirus, meaning ’fearsome dog’, they preyed on large mammals like bison. The team suggests the dire wolves’ stark evolutionary divergence from grey wolves places them in an entirely different genus – Aenocyon dirus (‘terrible wolf’)- as first proposed by paleontologist John Campbell Merriam over 100 years ago.