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Browsing by Author "Mason, Jordan"

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    Building a Statewide Experiential Learning Portfolio in Cybersecurity
    DaSilva, Luiz A.; Durant, Liza Wilson; Mason, Jordan; Hayes, Sarah (2023-06-25)
    The growing workforce gap in cybersecurity, with an estimated 770 thousand job openings across the country, poses economic and national security risks. Meanwhile, women, African Americans, Native Americans, and Latinos are significantly underrepresented in the cyber workforce. With these two challenges in mind, and informed by research findings that experiential learning opportunities correlate with multiple positive job outcomes, we have built a statewide experiential learning portfolio open to students in more than 40 two-year and four-year colleges and universities across Virginia. Programs in our experiential learning portfolio generally fall under one of five categories: transdisciplinary experiential learning; internships; traineeships; cybersecurity competitions; and intensive training coupled with professional development activities. In this paper, we describe the structure of these programs and associated metrics. Early results indicate very high interest by students and employers, high retention rates in cybersecurity careers, and gains in participation by underrepresented groups.
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    Dietary Conjugated Linoleic Acid Reduces Body Weight and Fat in Snord116m+/p- and Snord116m-/p- Mouse Models of Prader-Willi Syndrome
    Knott, Brittney; Kocher, Matthew A.; Paz, Henry A.; Hamm, Shelby E.; Fink, William; Mason, Jordan; Grange, Robert W.; Wankhade, Umesh D.; Good, Deborah J. (MDPI, 2022-02-18)
    Prader–Willi Syndrome (PWS) is a human genetic condition that affects up to 1 in 10,000 live births. Affected infants present with hypotonia and developmental delay. Hyperphagia and increasing body weight follow unless drastic calorie restriction is initiated. Recently, our laboratory showed that one of the genes in the deleted locus causative for PWS, Snord116, maintains increased expression of hypothalamic Nhlh2, a basic helix–loop–helix transcription factor. We have previously also shown that obese mice with a deletion of Nhlh2 respond to a conjugated linoleic acid (CLA) diet with weight and fat loss. In this study, we investigated whether mice with a paternal deletion of Snord116 (Snord116m+/p−) would respond similarly. We found that while Snord116m+/p− mice and mice with a deletion of both Snord116 alleles were not significantly obese on a high-fat diet, they did lose body weight and fat on a high-fat/CLA diet, suggesting that the genotype did not interfere with CLA actions. There were no changes in food intake or metabolic rate, and only moderate differences in exercise performance. RNA-seq and microbiome analyses identified hypothalamic mRNAs, and differentially populated gut bacteria, that support future mechanistic analyses. CLA may be useful as a food additive to reduce obesity in humans with PWS.