Faculty and Staff

Illicit psychostimulant addiction remains a significant problem worldwide, despite decades of research into the neural underpinnings and various treatment approaches. The purpose of this review is to provide a succinct overview of the neurocircuitry involved in drug addiction, as well as the acute and chronic effects of cocaine and amphetamines within this circuitry in humans. Investigational pharmacological treatments for illicit psychostimulant addiction are also reviewed. Our current knowledge base clearly demonstrates that illicit psychostimulants produce lasting adaptive neural and behavioral changes that contribute to the progression and maintenance of addiction. However, attempts at generating pharmacological treatments for psychostimulant addiction have historically focused on intervening at the level of the acute effects of these drugs. The lack of approved pharmacological treatments for psychostimulant addiction highlights the need for new treatment strategies, especially those that prevent or ameliorate the adaptive neural, cognitive, and behavioral changes caused by chronic use of this class of illicit drugs.

(Preprint.) Today's college and university learning landscapes are dynamic and
characterized by increased student demand for highly flexible and self-paced online learning opportunities. Recent fiscal conditions in higher education make learning landscape development more challenging due to finite resources and competing priorities. Similarly, academic libraries are experiencing substantial budget and staff reductions. Despite these trends, academic libraries are in a strong position to contribute to surrounding learning landscapes by expanding student online learning opportunities and promoting the critical use of information. Evolving learning technologies available for free or at low cost provide higher education and libraries with the tools to respond to this fluid environment.

Leveraging Drupal for your business:
Use Drupal to power your business -- hear case studies and learn about adapting to open-source technology.

Libraries are growing into new joint entities -- the library as a place, and the library as a resource. Library websites serve as a resource, delivering tools for learning to patrons and students in an academic setting. Drupal is an ideal tool for facilitating the specialized tasks that many library developers have to complete.

In this session, attendees will learn about:
       1. Using the built-in architecture of Drupal 6 and Drupal 7 to meet the goals of library 
           websites.
       2. The 10 best modules for library websites.
       3. 10 recommended theming techniques for common library interfaces.
       4. New expectations of library websites as gathered from user surveys and usability
           studies.
       5. Example set-ups of Drupal sites for common library settings and staff organizations.
       6. Successful case studies of major library websites run on Drupal.
       7. Tips for useful library-specific usability studies with library users and students.

Attendees will come away from this session with a firm understanding of quality library sites as tools, and what many users are growing to expect. They will also learn how to set up a Drupal website for a library, and successful ways to meet the specific resource needs of their organizations.

The archived event website can be accessed here.

Attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a risk factor for tobacco use and dependence. This study examines the responsiveness to nicotine of an adolescent model of ADHD, the spontaneously hypertensive rat (SHR). The conditioned place preference (CPP) procedure was used to assess nicotine-induced locomotion and conditioned reward in SHR and the Wistar Kyoto (WKY) control strain over a range of nicotine doses (0.0, 0.1, 0.3 and 0.6 mg/kg). Prior to conditioning, SHRs were more active and less biased toward one side of the CPP chamber than WKY rats. Following conditioning, SHRs developed CPP to the highest dose of nicotine (0.6 mg/kg), whereas WKYs did not develop CPP to any nicotine dose tested. During conditioning, SHRs displayed greater locomotor activity in the nicotine-paired compartment than in the saline-paired compartment across conditioning trials. SHRs that received nicotine (0.1, 0.3, 0.6 mg/kg) in the nicotine-paired compartment showed an increase in locomotor activity between conditioning trials. Nicotine did not significantly affect WKY locomotor activity. These findings suggest that the SHR strain is a suitable model for studying ADHD-related nicotine use and dependence, but highlights potential limitations of the WKY control strain and the CPP procedure for modeling ADHD-related nicotine reward.

Limited to streaming only those videos a vendor hosted, ASU Libraries sought to expand collection options with a trial project for hosting content locally. Kaltura, was selected as the platform, but Kaltura does not work out of the box. This presentation will cover how using Drupal, along with Kaltura, we built a working video hosting solution. The presentation will cover administrative hurdles, stumbling blocks, pitfalls, enhancements, and lessons learned along the way.