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Resiliency In Adolescent College Students, Nancy Ahern Jan 2007

Resiliency In Adolescent College Students, Nancy Ahern

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The construct of resilience has gained considerable attention over the last four decades since researchers observed that children and youth could cope and adapt in spite of adversity. Resilience involves a dynamic process involving an interaction between both risk and protective processes, internal and external to the individual, that can modify the effects of an adverse life event. Adolescence is considered to be a period of vulnerability for most individuals as they often partake in high risk behaviors. Further, those individuals who are in their early college years are faced with the developmental challenges of this life phase which can …


The Impact Of Music On Postoperative Pain And Anxiety, Kelly Dixon Allred Jan 2007

The Impact Of Music On Postoperative Pain And Anxiety, Kelly Dixon Allred

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Objective: The objective of this study was to add to the body of knowledge about the impact of music on postoperative pain and anxiety. The specific purpose of this research study was to determine if listening to music and/or having a quiet rest period just prior to and just after the first ambulation on postoperative day 1 can reduce pain and/or anxiety, or impact mean arterial pressure, heart rate, respiratory rate, and/or oxygen saturation in patients following a total knee arthroplasty. Methods: An experimental repeated measures design was used. Setting: A postoperative orthopedic unit in a 300-bed community hospital in …


Physical Characteristics Of An Individual: The Identification Of Biomarkers For Biological Age Determination, Michelle Alvarez Jan 2007

Physical Characteristics Of An Individual: The Identification Of Biomarkers For Biological Age Determination, Michelle Alvarez

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

It is now a matter of routine for the forensic scientist to obtain the genetic profile of an individual from DNA recovered from a biological stain deposited at a crime scene. Potential contributors of the stain must either be known to investigators (i.e. a developed suspect) or the questioned profile must be searched against a database of DNA profiles such as those maintained in the CODIS National DNA database. However, in those instances where there is no developed suspect and no match is obtained after interrogation of appropriate DNA databases, the DNA profile per se presently provides no meaningful information …


A Member Of The Novel Fikk Family Of Plasmodium Falciparum Putative Protein Kinases Exhibits Diacylglycerol Kinase Activity And Is Exported To The Host Erythrocyte, David Floyd Curtis Jan 2007

A Member Of The Novel Fikk Family Of Plasmodium Falciparum Putative Protein Kinases Exhibits Diacylglycerol Kinase Activity And Is Exported To The Host Erythrocyte, David Floyd Curtis

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Plasmodium falciparum is one of four species known to cause malaria in humans and is the species that is associated with the most virulent form of the disease. Malaria causes nearly two million deaths each year, many of these occurring among children in under-developed countries of the world. One reason for this is the prevalence of drug resistant strains of malaria that mitigate the efficacy of existing drugs. Hence, the identification of a new generation of pharmacological agents for malaria is extremely urgent. The recent identification of a group of novel protein kinases within the Plasmodium falciparum genome has provided …


Quality Of Life In Older Breast Cancer Survivors, Victoria Loerzel Jan 2007

Quality Of Life In Older Breast Cancer Survivors, Victoria Loerzel

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Quality of life (QoL) in cancer survivors is an important area of research. While data are available about QoL and breast cancer, there is a paucity of research regarding older breast cancer survivors. The purpose of this research was to examine QoL in older women with early stage breast cancer, within the first year of post-treatment survivorship. The specific aims of this study were to: 1) Describe the changes in overall QoL and the four QoL domains of Physical, Psychological, Social, and Spiritual well-being; 2) Examine the effects of a psychoeducational support intervention on QoL outcomes in older women; and …


Evaluating Neonatal Facial Pain Expression: Is There A Primal Face Of Pain?, Martin Schiavenato Jan 2007

Evaluating Neonatal Facial Pain Expression: Is There A Primal Face Of Pain?, Martin Schiavenato

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Pain assessment continues to be poorly managed in the clinical arena. A review of the communication process in pain assessment is carried out and the hierarchical approach often recommended in the literature -with self-report as its "gold-standard," is criticized as limited and simplistic. A comprehensive approach to pain assessment is recommended and a model that conceptualizes pain assessment as a complex transaction with various patient and clinician dependant factors is proposed. Attention is then focused on the pediatric patient whose pain assessment is often dependent on nonverbal communicative action. The clinical approaches to pain assessment in this population -mainly the …


Evaluation Of An Education Intervention For The Staff On The Head Of The Bed Elevation In The Pediatric Intensive Care Unit, Randall Johnson Jan 2007

Evaluation Of An Education Intervention For The Staff On The Head Of The Bed Elevation In The Pediatric Intensive Care Unit, Randall Johnson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Elevating the head of bed (HOB) reduces risks for aspiration and ventilator associated pneumonia (VAP) in the adult population. Educational interventions have resulted in improvements in achieving a target HOB elevation of 30° in adults. Limited research has addressed this intervention in the pediatric intensive care unit (PICU). The aim of this study was to determine if an educational intervention for the PICU staff would result in improvement in the HOB elevation in the PICU. Four research questions were studied: 1) What is the common practice related to the elevation of the HOB in the PICU? 2) Is there a …


Retrocyclin Rc-101 Overcomes Cationic Mutations On The Heptad Repeat 2 Of Hiv-1 Gp41, Christopher Fuhrman Jan 2007

Retrocyclin Rc-101 Overcomes Cationic Mutations On The Heptad Repeat 2 Of Hiv-1 Gp41, Christopher Fuhrman

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Retrocyclin RC-101, a θ-defensin with lectin-like properties, potently inhibits infection by many HIV-1 subtypes by binding to the heptad repeat (HR)-2 region of gp41 and preventing six-helix bundle formation. In the present study, we used in silico computational exploration to identify residues of HR2 that interacted with RC-101 and then analyzed the HIV-1 Sequence Database at LANL for residue variations in the HR1 and HR2 segments that could plausibly impart in vivo resistance. Docking RC-101 to gp41 peptides in silico confirmed its strong preference for HR2 over HR1, and implicated residues crucial for its ability to bind HR2. We mutagenized …


Phonetic And Acoustic Analyses Of Two New Cases Of Foreign Accent Syndrome, Rosalie Perkins Jan 2007

Phonetic And Acoustic Analyses Of Two New Cases Of Foreign Accent Syndrome, Rosalie Perkins

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study presents detailed phonetic and acoustic analyses of the speech characteristics of two new cases of Foreign Accent Syndrome (FAS). Participants include a 48-year-old female who began speaking with an "Eastern European" accent following a traumatic brain injury, and a 45-year-old male who presented with a "British" accent following a subcortical cerebral vascular accident (CVA). Identical samples of the participants' pre- and post-morbid speech were obtained, thus affording a new level of control in the study of Foreign Accent Syndrome. The speech tasks consisted of oral readings of the Grandfather Passage and 18 real words comprised of the stop …