VTechWorks
VTechWorks provides global access to Virginia Tech scholarship, including journal articles, books, theses, dissertations, conference papers, slide presentations, technical reports, working papers, administrative documents, videos, images, and more by faculty, students, and staff. Faculty can deposit items to VTechWorks from Elements, including journal articles covered by the University open access policy. Email vtechworks@vt.edu for help.
Open Access Policy
Virginia Tech's open access policy enables researchers to deposit the accepted version of scholarly articles with no embargo.
Theses and Dissertations
Virginia Tech was first in the world to require ETDs in 1997, and continues to add scans of older theses and dissertations.
Open Textbooks
More than 40 freely available and openly licensed textbooks are among our most downloaded items.
Communities in VTechWorks
Select a community to browse its collections.
Recent Submissions
Preoccupations
Melling, Daniel Richard (Virginia Tech, 2019-05-17)
Preoccupations is a creative work dealing with the subject of existence. It takes the form of a collection of poems and creative essays that deal with the subject in one way or another. There are a variety of subjects used as vehicles to pursue the overall theme, ranging from groundhogs and the desire to become one, to drug and alcohol dependency. Preoccupations also deals with the subject of death, specifically the early deaths of the speaker's friends. There are a number of questions asked in Preoccupations, few of which are able to be answered. This is an accurate reflection of the thought process of the speaker.
How might a bureaucratic information system (BIS) provide leadership for an organization?
Haugen, Inga (2024-03-27)
Coevolution of library services, scholarly communication infrastructures, and emergent academic fields: the ongoing case of veterans studies
Pencek, Bruce; Higgins, Jason A.; McGandy, Michael (University of Michigan Press, 2023-11-28)
A decade ago, an archivist and a librarian asked the Charleston Conference: Is your library ready for an emergent academic field? (Brodsky and Pencek 2013) Here we present a history of that emerging academic field, veterans studies, emphasizing its coevolution with library services that support scholarly communication. These culminated in a flourishing open-access journal, a biennial conference, and a scholarly association to coordinate them. Ultimately, a local initiative became an international network that attracted federal grants and publisher interest. But even with scholars’ networks growing and librarians promoting access and preservation, a key question before the field is whether today's publishing ecosystem can be sufficiently robust and diversified to carry forward the multidisciplinary, transnational intellectual project laid out in the Veterans Studies Association’s scope statement (VSA 2022). Although a peculiar convergence of opportunities made possible one library’s contribution to the institutionalization of veterans studies, university libraries' intellectual and technological resources – even in their early stages – to support their own communities may be better equipped than they assume to help scholars grow new fields of research and instruction.
The probability of chromatin to be at the nuclear lamina has no systematic effect on its transcription level in fruit flies
Afanasyev, Alexander Y.; Kim, Yoonjin; Tolokh, Igor S.; Sharakhov, Igor V.; Onufriev, Alexey V. (2024-05-06)
Background: Multiple studies have demonstrated a negative correlation between gene expression and positioning of genes at the nuclear envelope (NE) lined by nuclear lamina, but the exact relationship remains unclear, especially in light of the highly stochastic, transient nature of the gene association with the NE.
Results: In this paper, we ask whether there is a causal, systematic, genome-wide relationship between the expression levels of the groups of genes in topologically associating domains (TADs) of Drosophila nuclei and the probabilities of TADs to be found at the NE. To investigate the nature of this possible relationship, we combine a coarse-grained dynamic model of the entire Drosophila nucleus with genome-wide gene expression data; we analyze the TAD averaged transcription levels of genes against the probabilities of individual TADs to be in contact with the NE in the control and lamins-depleted nuclei. Our findings demonstrate that, within the statistical error margin, the stochastic positioning of Drosophila melanogaster TADs at the NE does not, by itself, systematically affect the mean level of gene expression in these TADs, while the expected negative correlation is confirmed. The correlation is weak and disappears completely for TADs not containing lamina-associated domains (LADs) or TADs containing LADs, considered separately. Verifiable hypotheses regarding the underlying mechanism for the presence of the correlation without causality are discussed. These include the possibility that the epigenetic marks and affinity to the NE of a TAD are determined by various non-mutually exclusive mechanisms and remain relatively stable during interphase.
Conclusions: At the level of TADs, the probability of chromatin being in contact with the nuclear envelope has no systematic, causal effect on the transcription level in Drosophila. The conclusion is reached by combining model-derived time-evolution of TAD locations within the nucleus with their experimental gene expression levels.
Cost-Effective Methods for Reducing Sediment Loads in the Lick Run Watershed
Thompson, Theresa M.; Sample, David J.; Stephenson, Stephen Kurt; Towsif Khan, Sami; Macdonald, Kiara (2024-05-15)