The ScholarShip

The ScholarShip is a digital archive for the scholarly output of the ECU community. Its mission is to capture, preserve, and make available the intellectual output of East Carolina University's faculty, staff, and students.

Communities & Collections in the ScholarShip

Select a community to browse its collections.

Now showing 1 - 8 of 8

Recent Submissions

Access status: Open Access ,
Disparities in Access to Gastrointestinal Care in the United States
(Digestive Diseases and Sciences, 2026) Ali, Hassam
Disparities in gastrointestinal (GI) care in the United States represent a major health burden, with GI diseases accounting for approximately $135 billion annually in direct medical expenditures. A pronounced geographic disparity exists, with over two-thirds of the 3,149 U.S. counties lacking any GI specialist. This results in an estimated 49–50 million Americans required to travel more than 25 miles for specialty care. For instance, states like Wyoming and Arizona report over 75% of residents are more than 25 miles from GI care, while states such as Alaska and North Dakota average only 1.8 gastroenterologists per 100,000 population. Socioeconomic inequities manifest as tangible deficits in care: a lack of insurance is associated with a 15–20% point gap in colorectal cancer (CRC) screening uptake. For hepatitis C virus (HCV) treatment, initiation within one year of diagnosis was 35% for privately insured patients but only 23% for Medicaid patients. In acute emergencies, uninsured patients face higher mortality in both upper GI bleeding (UGIB) and lower GI bleeding (LGIB). Targeted interventions show promise in mitigation: community health worker (CHW)-led programs have been shown to significantly increase CRC screening uptake. Patient navigation, often combined with mailed fecal immunochemical tests (FIT), has increased CRC screening completion by 7.3% points in safety-net populations. Telemedicine models can expand access, with video-based IBD care management programs requiring in-person evaluations in only ~ 1.3% of cases. Policy reforms, such as removing restrictive state Medicaid criteria for HCV therapy, have been shown to significantly increase treatment and narrow disparities. Continued focus on workforce incentives and data transparency remains critical to address these persistent, structurally rooted gaps.
Access status: Open Access ,
Sensitivity of Flood Extent and Population Exposure to Variations in Bathymetry Across a Shallow Continental Shelf Lagoon
(Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans, 2026) Al-Attabi, Zaid; Narayan, Siddharth; Wuppukondur, Ananth; Babanawo, Daystar; Xu, Yicheng; Lagomasino, David.
Bathymetry is a critical input to storm surge models on coastlines fronted by lagoon systems, yet few studies explore how variations in bathymetry influence flood impacts, flooded extent, and exposed population across these globally widespread morphologies. Here, we investigate the influence of variations in bathymetry on storm inundation impact estimates across a continental shelf lagoon system. We explore how flooded extents and exposed population estimates from a 1% storm for Belize vary with estimated depths by comparing three existing bathymetries over a northern shallow, enclosed lagoon and a central deeper, open lagoon system with a newly developed bathymetry data set, Satellite-Derived Bathymetry Enhanced Data set-SDBED. We compare multiple bathymetric data sets to understand the influence on the flood uncertainties and the quantity of the impact of exposed population estimates. Our results show that greater estimated lagoon depths consistently result in lower predicted flood impacts for both lagoon systems in almost all cases. Unexpectedly, for one bathymetry with a median depth of 2 m in the northern lagoon, we find that a reduction in lagoon volume by 59% reduces total inundation volume by 45%. Our findings also show how vertical uncertainties in the SDBED bathymetry propagate through the model, resulting in variations of up to 12% in flood extents and up to 2% in exposed populations.
Access status: Metadata only ,
Asymmetrical effects of temperature on stage-structured predator-prey interactions
(2021-03-02)
Warming can impact consumer-resource interactions through multiple mechanisms. For example, warming can both alter the rate at which predators consume prey and the rate prey develop through vulnerable life stages. Thus, the overall effect of warming on consumer-resource interactions will depend upon the strength and asymmetry of warming effects on predator and prey performance. Here, we quantified the temperature dependence of both 1) density-dependent predation rates for two dragonfly nymph predators on a shared mosquito larval prey, via the functional response, and 2) the development rate of mosquito larval prey to a predator-invulnerable adult stage. We united the results of these two empirical studies using a temperature- and density-dependent stage-structured predation model. Warming accelerated both larval mosquito development and increased dragonfly consumption. Model simulations suggest that differences in the magnitude and rate of predator and prey responses to warming determined the change in magnitude of the overall effect of predation on prey survival to adulthood. Specifically, we found that depending on which predator species prey were exposed to in the model, the net effect of warming was either an overall reduction or no change in predation strength across a temperature gradient. Our results highlight a need for better mechanistic understanding of the differential effects of temperature on consumer-resource pairs to accurately predict how warming affects food web dynamics.
Access status: Metadata only ,
Transcriptome data: salinity adaptation in Rhithropanopeus harrisii across an estuarine gradient
(2021-06-04)
"Rhithropanopeus harrisii is a common estuarine crab native to the East and Gulf Coasts of North America. Here, it is found along a broad range of salinities, spanning from ~1 PSU to ~25 PSU along estuarine gradients. As part of a larger study on the species' potential use of low-salinity refuges from parasitism, we tested for differences in gene expression with salinity using crabs from three distinct estuarine reaches along the Pamlico River in North Carolina. We acclimated crabs collected at natural sites with 1, 5, and 11 PSU mean salinity to 0.8, 3, and 15 PSU in the laboratory for one week and sequenced gill tissue (second posterior gill) from each group using mRNA-Seq. Data in this repository includes information on sequenced samples (*csv), the de novo transcriptome assembly (two versions: with and without expression filtering; *.fasta), transcriptome annotation from EnTAP (two files: using the runN and runP functions; *.tsv), a spreadsheet of normalized read count data from salmon pseudo-alignment (*.tsv), high-quality SNPs identified from the transcriptome sequencing with GATK (*.vcf), and three custom scripts used in processing the SNP data (*.py and *.R). Raw sequence data is archived in GenBank's SRA: BioProject PRJNA730785, BioSamples SAMN19241288-SAMN19241333."
Access status: Metadata only ,
Invasion history shapes host transcriptomic response to a body-snatching parasite
(2021-06-21)
By shuffling biogeographic distributions, biological invasions can both disrupt long-standing associations between hosts and parasites and establish new ones. This creates natural experiments with which to study the ecology and evolution of host-parasite interactions. In estuaries of the Gulf of Mexico, the white-fingered mud crab (Rhithropanopeus harrisii) is infected by a native parasitic barnacle Loxothylacus panopaei (Rhizocephala), which manipulates host physiology and behavior. In the 1960s, L. panopaei was introduced to the Chesapeake Bay and has since expanded along the southeastern Atlantic coast, while host populations in the northeast have so far been spared. We use this system to test the host’s transcriptomic response to parasitic infection and investigate how this response varies with the parasite’s invasion history, comparing populations representing (1) long-term sympatry between host and parasite, (2) new associations where the parasite has invaded during the last sixty years, and (3) naïve hosts without prior exposure. A comparison of parasitized and control crabs revealed a core response, with widespread downregulation of transcripts involved in immunity and molting. The transcriptional response differed between hosts from the parasite’s native range and where it is absent, consistent with previous observations of increased susceptibility in populations lacking exposure to the parasite. Crabs from the parasite’s introduced range, where prevalence is highest, displayed the most dissimilar response, possibly reflecting immune priming. These results provide molecular evidence for parasitic manipulation of host phenotype and the role of gene regulation in mediating host-parasite interactions.