Digital Commons Network^™

Lipid-Based Self-Assembled Nps: The Effects Of Morphology And Targeting Molecules On The Cellular Uptake Using In Vitro Tumor Model, Wafa Aresh

Doctoral Dissertations

While the usage of nanoscale materials for therapeutics and diagnostics is growing rapidly, there remain many challenges to understanding the expected controlling parameters (e.g., size, shape and chemical properties) that significantly affect the performance of the nanomaterials due to complicated in vivo environments. Therefore, a strong interest in the knowledge of the nano–biointeractions and how they contribute to tissue accumulation has been developed. To date, researchers have relied on monolayer cell cultures and animal models to study such nano–biointeractions. However, currently, there is a big gap between the result of the over-simplified in vitro cell response and the complex animal …

The Role Of One-Carbon Metabolism In The Development And Prevention Of Colorectal Cancer, Matthew P. Hanley

Doctoral Dissertations

Colorectal cancer (CRC) is the 3^rd most common form of cancer in the United States, and the 2^nd most common cause of cancer-related death. CRC incidence has declined over the past several decades, however, there is a continued need for improved methods of CRC detection and prevention. Methyl group homeostasis, which is dysregulated in CRC and impacts several fundamental biological processes, represents a promising target for novel CRC detection and prevention strategies. DNA methylation is influenced by methyl group homeostasis and is known to be frequently dysregulated in CRC. However, less is known about the extent of aberrant …

Robert Ward’S The Crucible: Politics And Personal Relationships In An Operatic Adaptation, Ryan F. Burns

Doctoral Dissertations

ABSTRACT

Robert Ward’s The Crucible:

Politics and Personal Relationships in an Operatic Adaptation

Ryan Francis Burns, DMA

University of Connecticut, 2017

American composer, Robert Eugene Ward (1917-2013), made a significant contribution to the world of musical composition. His most enduring legacy is likely to remain his award-winning operatic adaptation of Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, which premiered in 1961 by the New York City Opera. In politics, the personal can often be secondary, but for Ward’s opera, with political content at its very core, it is essential. By analyzing John Proctor’s relationship with his wife, Elizabeth, and his former …

Influence Of Mutation Frequency On Mutation Profile In Colon Cancer, Michael J. Gooch

Doctoral Dissertations

Archival abstract submitted

Integrative Analysis Of Heterogeneous Genomics Data For Triple Negative Breast Cancer And High Grade Serous Ovarian Cancer, Abdelrahman Hosny Ibrahim

Master's Theses

The human body is made up of trillions of cells. Although all the human body cells contain the same DNA sequence inside their nuclei, each one carries out its own function. Normally, human cells grow and divide to form daughter cells as the body needs them. When cells grow old, or lose their ability to function properly, they die (in a very organized way called apoptosis or programmed cell death) and new cells take their role. Cancer is a disease that is caused by uncontrolled division of abnormal cells in some part of the body, breaking the natural process of …

Azeotrope Enabled Anionic Polymerization Of Ethylene Oxide Using Initiators With Different Functional Groups, Dronareddy Madugula

Master's Theses

Poly(ethylene oxide) (PEO) is a nonionic hydrophilic polymer having the same repeat unit as poly(ethylene glycol) (PEG). It is of interest in both biology and materials science. PEO surfaces demonstrate a unique lack of protein adhesion, and PEO block copolymers are widely used in applications such as drug delivery. Unfortunately, the synthesis of PEO homopolymers and block copolymers can be experimentally challenging, with a typical method involving air sensitive organometallics and the removal of compounds such as naphthalene from the final product. Here we report a synthetic route that avoids these difficulties by using azeotropic distillation to remove water from …

Change In Urban Fabric Through Space And Time At Differing Levels Of Automobility, Kristin A. Floberg

Master's Theses

For thousands of years cities have been centers for commerce, creativity, and livelihood, consisting of relatively unchanged characteristics such as walkable streets, diverse land-uses, and human-scaled buildings and streets. With the introduction of the automobile, this past century the desire for free-flowing traffic and convenient parking has drastically transformed the fabric of many cities. Transforming cities into places that accommodate automobiles has transformed downtowns into office parks rather than vibrant mixed-use environments and destroyed communities.

Investigation into reducing automobiles in cities has increasingly piqued the interest of stakeholders in the environmental, safety and economic development communities. This body of research …

The Inter- And Intra-Rater Reliability Of Athletic Trainers At Identifying Acl Injury Risk Factors Using The Cutting Screening Tool, Kelly Buckholz Smallbeck

Master's Theses

Background: ACL injuries are a frequently talked about injury in sports and have a multitude of negative side effects. A majority of injuries occur during single-leg cutting motions. Clinical screening tools are an effective way to identify those demonstrating more ACL injury risk factors. Recent research has created a variety of clinical screening tools to identify ACL injury risk factors, however none screen athletes during a single-leg cutting motion.

Hypothesis: A clinical screening tool using a single-leg cutting motion (the Cutting Screening Tool, or CST) will reliably identify ACL injury risk factors when used by athletic trainers.

Methods: Six currently …

The Symbiotic Green Algae, Oophila (Chlamydomonadales, Chlorophyceae): A Heterotrophic Growth Study And Taxonomic History, Nikolaus Schultz

Master's Theses

The green alga Oophila ambystomatus (Chlamydomonadales, Chlorophyceae) is

well known as the symbiotic partner of Ambystoma maculatum, the yellow-spotted

salamander. Recent molecular work has revealed phylogenetic diversity within isolates of

Oophila from New England. Here I investigate physiological properties and genetic

diversity of the algal symbionts representing different evolutionary lineages. In other

well-studied symbiotic systems involving algae, e.g., Chlorella and Hydra, algae and

lichen, or Symbiodinium and Scleractinian corals, the algal symbiont is capable of

multiple trophic modes, thus influencing its capacity as a partner. In this study I

investigated whether genetically differentiated strains of Oophila are capable of

absorbing …

Sorption And Metabolism Of Explosives In Sediment Of Coastal Marine Ecosystems, Thivanka S. Ariyarathna

Doctoral Dissertations

The lack of knowledge on fate and transport of explosive compounds, 2,4,6-trinitrotoluene (TNT) and hexahydro-1,3,5-trinitro-1,3,5-triazine (RDX) in marine ecosystems limits the ability to predict toxicological impacts and natural attenuation of these suspected carcinogens in contaminated coastal sites. This study focuses on improving our understanding of the sorption and transformation of TNT and RDX in coastal ecosystems by using stable nitrogen isotopes.

Abiotic and biotic bench-top experiments using sediment slurries evaluated sorption kinetics and anaerobic biotransformation. Marine silt showed higher compound-uptake rates (> ~100) than freshwater silt for both compounds though equilibrium partition constants (Kp’s) were on the same order of …

Design And Synthesis Of Next Generation Propargyl-Linked Antifolates, Eric Scocchera

Doctoral Dissertations

Antibiotic resistance is an ever-present problem that reduces the arsenal of antibiotics human’s possess to fight pathogenic infections. New generations of antibiotics are therefore always required. Recent history has seen few novel classes of antibiotics, instead structural modifications of previous classes are often the source of new antibiotics. Antifolates are a colloquial name given to various compound classes that are capable of inhibiting the bacterial production of folate or enzymes that require folate for proper cellular function. Dihydrofolate reductase (DHFR) is a crucial enzyme in this pathway, and is inhibited in bacteria only by trimethoprim (TMP). TMP is used clinically …

Assessing Epigenetic Features Of Gaba(A) Receptor Genes In Ipscs, Ipsc-Derived Neuroepithelial Cells, And Ipsc-Derived Neural Cell Cultures, Maegan Watson

Doctoral Dissertations

Alcohol use disorders (AUDs) affect approximately 13.9% of the population in the United States. Many groups have found a correlation between AUDs and a synonymous SNP in exon 5 of the GABRA2 gene (rs279858 T to C; C allele associated with AUDs). However, the biological effects of this and other SNPs in this region are unknown.

Our lab has been using iPSC technology for the past few years to study AUDs. The lab has shown, using qPCR of mRNA, that a cluster of GABA_A receptor subunit genes on chromosome 4p12 is expressed at minimal levels in neural cells derived …

Short Branch Attraction, The Fundamental Bipartition In Cellular Life, And Eukaryogenesis, Amanda A. Dick Phd

Doctoral Dissertations

Short Branch Attraction occurs when BLAST searches are used as surrogate for phylogenetic analysis. This results from branch length heterogeneity. The short branches, not the long, are attracting.

The root of cellular life is on the bacterial branch, meaning the Archaea and eukaryotic nucleocytoplasm form a clade. This split, the realm, is the first in the cellular tree of life. I name the clade containing the Archaea and eukaryotic nucleocytoplasm the Ibisii based on shared characteristics involved in information processing and translation. The Bacteria are members of the other realm, the Bacterii.

Eukaryogenesis is the study of how the Eukarya …

Role Of Wettability In Fuel Cells, Jaehyung Park

Doctoral Dissertations

Fuel cells have received significant attention as a promising candidate for efficient and emission-free power in automotive, stationary, and portable applications. This work is focused on sophisticated schemes for surface wettability impact on fuel cell performance are required by using proper wettability characteristics for the fuel cell components.

Foreign cations are shown to cause mass transport losses, in particular due to wettability changes in the gas diffusion media (GDM) and have a major impact on the durability and the performance of polymer electrolyte fuel cell (PEFC). The effects of cationic impurities on fuel cell system performance, especially on the water …

Selection And Robustness In Bacterial Genome Evolution, Seila Omer

Doctoral Dissertations

The research presented in this thesis attempts to address research questions related to the role of natural selection in the evolution of bacterial genes not expressed for function and in building mutational tolerance to translational errors. Studies on evolution of protein coding DNA sequences have provided the evidence for a current paradigm in evolutionary biology: only functional genes are undergoing selection against the deleterious effects of allele variants (purifying selection). I provide evidence that similar footprints of selection can be detected in genes that are not normally expressed for function during the bacterial life cycle. Using simulations for DNA sequence …

Prepared Practitioners: An Evaluation Of The Professional Development Experiences Of Sport-Based Youth Development Practitioners, Danielle A. Derosa

Master's Theses

Professional development for Out-of-School time (OST) staff is a comprehensive term that can refer to a variety of education, training, and development opportunities (Bouffard & Little, 2004). As a way to develop staff, organizations spend time and resources to provide opportunities that encourage the acquisition of knowledge and growth. One theory that has been looked at for its impact on professional development is the Community of Practice (CoP) is a framework (Wenger, 1998). With its focus on learning as social participation, CoP framework defines itself along three dimensions; joint enterprise, mutual engagement and shared repertoire (Cheng & Lee, 2013; Akerson, …

Comprehensive Applications Of Rice Husk Biomass, Zichao Wei

Master's Theses

Rice husks (RHs) have recently attracted high attention due to their potential for many applications, including construction materials, composite materials, adsorption materials, chemical production, and power generation. RHs are an appealing alternative because of their low cost and high silica content. So far, most researchers mainly focus on the utilization of one component (such as silica) while ignoring others. Comprehensive utilization of RH biomass and diversified products are the key goals for this research field.

In this thesis, the two main components of RHs, silica and lignocellulose, were extracted from RH biomass. The high tempered calcination served as the extraction …

Cultural Trauma, History Making, And The Politics Of Ethnic Identity Among Afghan Hazaras, Melissa S. Kerr Chiovenda

Doctoral Dissertations

Based on 18 months of fieldwork in Bamyan and West Kabul, Afghanistan among ethnic Hazara civil society activists, I examine civil society groups’ protests and memorialization activities as social and political acts of collective and cultural trauma generation and dissemination. The activists’ protests seek to secure greater rights, security and infrastructural development in Hazara populated areas, and memorialize past rights violations and atrocities against Hazaras. Through protests, literature and social media, the retelling of traumatic events inculcates and spreads collective trauma. And the framing of these past events as a present existential threat merges with a widespread sense that Hazara …

A High Level Framework For Solver Independent Model Manipulation And Generation Of Hybrid Solvers, Daniel Fontaine

Doctoral Dissertations

Many critical real world problems, including problems in areas such as logistics, routing and scheduling are very difficult to solve computationally (often NP-hard). Various programming and algorithmic paradigms have been developed to deal with these problems, including Constraint Programming (CP), Integer Programming (IP) and Local Search (LS). These technologies are largely declarative in nature and rely on vastly different underlying mathematical and algorithmic approaches. Hence, each paradigm has inherent strengths and weaknesses making it more or less suitable to a given problem. For particularly difficult problems, it can often be beneficial to leverage a sophisticated “hybrid solver” technique. Such techniques …

Extension Of L1 Adaptive Control With Applications, Jiaxing Che

Doctoral Dissertations

Adaptive control is the control method used by a controller which adapt to a system with unknown or varying parameters. As a newly developed technique, L1 adaptive control has drawn increased attention in past decades. The key feature of L1 adaptive control architecture is guaranteed robustness in the presence of fast adaptation. With L1 adaptive control architecture, fast adaptation appears to be beneficial both for performance and robustness, while the trade-off between the two is resolved via the selection of the underlying filtering structure. The latter can be addressed via conventional methods from classical and robust control. Moreover, the performance …

Physiological, Behavioral, And Knowledge Assessment Of Runners’ Readiness To Perform In The Heat, Yuri Hosokawa

Doctoral Dissertations

Many intrinsic and extrinsic factors may contribute to exertional heat stroke (EHS) susceptibility. Despite many plausible risk factors for EHS in runners, much remains unknown about how risk factors contribute to EHS risk and how education to modify behavior may reduce EHS risk. Therefore, this study investigated: (1) the differences between runners’ planned and actual hours of sleep, hydration strategies, and intake of medication and supplements at the 2016 Falmouth Road Race (FRR) and their current knowledge on heat safety and hydration, (2) effectiveness of educational video intervention in improving runner’s knowledge on heat safety and hydration, (3) effectiveness in …

The Interaction Of Mercury And Methylmercury With Reduced Sulfur: Implications For The Transformation Of Mercury And Methylmercury In The Environment, Nashaat M. Mazrui

Doctoral Dissertations

Archival abstract submitted

An Experimental Investigation Of The Factors Supporting The Emergence Of Spatial Agreement In Nicaraguan Sign Language, Emily Carrigan

Doctoral Dissertations

Studies of natural language emergence provide unique opportunities for examining the learner-internal and environmental factors underlying language development, but lack the control of factors necessary to test hypotheses about language development. By ‘language development,’ I intend to encompass both language acquisition and modern-day language change/emergence, which I argue are driven by many of the same factors. Researchers of Nicaraguan Sign Language, an emerging language, have proposed that intergenerational transfer and particularly child language-learning mechanisms (e.g. the propensity to ‘reanalyze’ and systematize inconsistent input) shape the development of the language. We observe this potential pattern in the emergence of the systematic …

Mixed-Integer Optimization Problems With Applications To Manufacturing Scheduling And Distributed Energy System Operation, Bing Yan

Doctoral Dissertations

Archival abstract submitted

An Efficient Solution Methodology For Mixed-Integer Programming Problems Arising In Power Systems, Mikhail Bragin

Doctoral Dissertations

For many important mixed-integer programming (MIP) problems, the goal is to obtain near-optimal solutions with quantifiable quality in a computationally efficient manner (within, e.g., 5, 10 or 20 minutes). A traditional method to solve such problems has been Lagrangian relaxation, but the method suffers from zigzagging of multipliers and slow convergence. When solving mixed-integer linear programming (MILP) problems, the recently adopted branch-and-cut may also suffer from slow convergence because when the convex hull of the problems has complicated facial structures, facet-defining cuts are typically difficult to obtain, and the method relies mostly on time-consuming branching operations. In this thesis, the …

The Role Of Prospective And Retrospective Cognition In Adolescent Mental Health, Gabriel F. Byer-Alcorace

Doctoral Dissertations

This study attempted to replicate the methods of Miles, MacLeod, and Pote (2004) who attempted to extend the application of a theory proposed by Andrew MacLeod and colleagues in the late 1990s. Only the aforementioned study has examined this theory with adolescents ages 14 to 19 year olds enrolled in public schools and 18 to 19 year olds enrolled universities. In the present study 169 students were asked to complete an assessment battery containing measures of depression, anxiety, stress, hope, and demographic information, as well as completing a positive and negative cognition task. It was hypothesized that a strong negative …

Population And Trophic Dynamics Of Striped Bass And Blueback Herring In The Connecticut River, Justin P. Davis

Doctoral Dissertations

Case studies of the ramifications of predator management for prey population dynamics can play a valuable role in developing ecosystem fisheries management. My dissertation focuses on the predator-prey interaction between Striped Bass (Morone saxatilis), an abundant predatory finfish, and an imperiled prey population of anadromous Blueback Herring (Alosa aestivalis). Annual returns of Blueback Herring to the Holyoke Dam on the Connecticut River in southern New England collapsed during the 1980-2000s, coincident with Striped Bass recovery. I studied the abundance and demography of both species in the Connecticut River during 2005-08, measured predation levels, and surveyed the …

Addressing The Gender Workforce Gap In The Scientific Journal Editorial Hierarchy, Nishelli Ishti Ahmed

Master's Theses

No abstract provided.

Determining The Efficacy Of Antimicrobials For The Inhibition And Inactivation Of Listeria Monocytogenes In Broth, Whole Milk, And Fresh Cheese., Sarah Kozak

Master's Theses

Listeria monocytogenes is a bacterial pathogen that causes listeriosis, the third-leading cause of death related to foodborne illness. The anti-listerial efficacy of acidified calcium sulfate with lactic acid (ACSL), beta-resorcylic acid (BR), caprylic acid (CA), e-polylysine (EPL), hydrogen peroxide (HP), lauric arginate ethyl ester (LAE), and sodium caprylate (SC) was determined in Brain Heart Infusion broth, ultra-high-temperature pasteurized milk, and fresh cheese (Queso Fresco). Binary combinations of antimicrobials were tested to identify synergistic interactions, which can reduce usage rates. Overall, HP was the most efficacious treatment with concentrations of 40-50 ppm inhibiting L. monocytogenes in broth, 200 ppm resulting in …

Micro-Mixing In Turbulent Premixed Flames, Michael Joseph Kuron

Doctoral Dissertations

Accurate turbulent combustion models are key to establishing a predictive capability for combustion simulations at the device level. The transported probability density function (TPDF) methods provide an elegant solution to the challenge of closing the mean chemical source term in turbulent combustion modelling as it appears in closed form in the TPDF equations and thus the turbulence-chemistry interaction can be solved for without aggressive assumptions. This is crucial for predicting low temperature combustion, turbulent flames with the presence of local limit phenomena, and pollutant emissions. Despite some reported success in the literature, challenges remain when applying the TPDF method to …