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Piezo1: Proteins For Mechanotransduction And Integration Of Endothelial Shear Stress & Intravascular Pressure, Juan Garcia Robledo M.D.

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Piezo proteins are transmembrane ion channels, specialized in detecting mechanosensitive stimuli and transduce mechanical forces into biochemical signals. Piezo proteins research has helped understand physiological mechanisms, but the integrative role that Piezo1 plays in the regulation of the microvasculature has remained unstudied. Our main objective was to characterize ex vivo microvascular responses to the blockade of Piezo1 mechanotransduction in male (n=29) and female (n=24) Sprague-Dawley (SD) rats. Gracilis arterioles (GA) and middle cerebral arterioles (MCA) were harvested for ex-vivo vessel preparations. After vessel viability confirmation, every vessel was submitted to myogenic and flow challenges under control conditions and after Grammostola …

Functional Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy In First-Episode Schizophrenia: Measuring Glutamate And Glutathione Dynamics At 7-Tesla, Peter Jeon

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Schizophrenia is a neuropsychiatric illness without known etiology or cure. Current efforts for symptom treatment still seem to leave a large portion of affected individuals without proper symptom management, with those experiencing symptom relief still having to wrestle with potential side-effects from medication trials. There has been growing evidence suggesting that glutamate and glutathione abnormalities hold major roles in development and manifestation of schizophrenia symptoms.

Magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS) provides a non-invasive means to observe in-vivo brain chemistry, including glutamate and glutathione. By adding a functional component to an MRS paradigm (fMRS), such as the color-word Stroop task, it is …

Towards On-Line Plan Adaptation Of Unified Intensity-Modulated Arc Therapy Using A Fast-Direct Aperture Optimization Algorithm, Michael Macfarlane

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

External beam radiotherapy (EBRT) plays a vital role in the treatment of cancer, with close to half of all cancer patients receiving EBRT at some point over their course of treatment. Although EBRT is a well-established form of treatment, there are a number of ways in which EBRT could still be improved in terms of quality and efficiency for treatment planning and radiation dose delivery. This thesis reports a series of improvements made to EBRT.

First, we developed and evaluated a new treatment planning technique called unified intensity-modulated arc therapy (UIMAT) which combines the optimization and delivery of rotational volumetric …