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Full-Text Articles in Life Sciences

Exposure Characterization And Assessment Of Airborne Chemicals And Sars-Cov-2 Transmission In New York City Nail Salons, Amelia P. H. Watkins Jun 2021

Exposure Characterization And Assessment Of Airborne Chemicals And Sars-Cov-2 Transmission In New York City Nail Salons, Amelia P. H. Watkins

Dissertations and Theses

Background: Currently, there are 156,000 people employed as manicurists or pedicurists in the United States. Employment in this sector is expected to grow by 10% over the next decade. Exposure assessments have revealed that salon workers are chronically exposed to a variety of substances that cause respiratory sensitization, developmental problems, contact dermatitis, blood, liver, and kidney issues, as well as nervous system impacts. Most recently, the SARS-Cov-2 pandemic has raised the issue of the vulnerability of nail salon workers to airborne infectious diseases as well. This dissertation aims to characterize and assess the chemical exposures that nail salon workers …


A Snowball Effect: A Pandemic’S Impacts On Household Food Insecurity In The United States, Sidie Sahid Sisay Jan 2021

A Snowball Effect: A Pandemic’S Impacts On Household Food Insecurity In The United States, Sidie Sahid Sisay

Dissertations and Theses

Economic insecurity exists whenever income sources are uncertain, and this is a failure of a fundamental human right. The Covid-19 pandemic has presented unprecedented disruptions to the US economy and has created unparalleled food insufficiency and economic hardships. Before the pandemic, household food insufficiency existed but downplayed in the political arena. In 2019, 10.5 percent of households in the US lived in extreme poverty and were food insecure, the lowest since 1959, but the pandemic has had devastating effects on household food insufficiency. This paper uses nationally representative data from the Census Bureau’s weekly household pulse survey, coupled with standard …


Mechanisms Of Value-Biased Prioritization In Fast Sensorimotor Decision Making, Kivilcim Afacan-Seref Jan 2020

Mechanisms Of Value-Biased Prioritization In Fast Sensorimotor Decision Making, Kivilcim Afacan-Seref

Dissertations and Theses

In dynamic environments, split-second sensorimotor decisions must be prioritized according to potential payoffs to maximize overall rewards. The impact of relative value on deliberative perceptual judgments has been examined extensively, but relatively little is known about value-biasing mechanisms in the common situation where physical evidence is strong but the time to act is severely limited. This research examines the behavioral and electrophysiological indices of how value biases split-second perceptual decisions and the possible mechanisms underlying the process. In prominent decision models, a noisy but statistically stationary representation of sensory evidence is integrated over time to an action-triggering bound, and value-biases …


Are Weevils Picky Eaters? Community Structure And Host Specificity Of Neotropical Saproxylic Beetles (Coleoptera: Curculionidae), Jhunior A. Morillo Jan 2017

Are Weevils Picky Eaters? Community Structure And Host Specificity Of Neotropical Saproxylic Beetles (Coleoptera: Curculionidae), Jhunior A. Morillo

Dissertations and Theses

Abstract Primary saproxylic beetles play a major role in forest nutrient cycling and making deadwood accessible to other decomposers. Understanding beetle host preferences and patterns of community assembly is critical for their conservation, and for predicting which species might become invasive. This project aims to investigate the ecological and host specificity, as well as the community composition of curculionids in a mosaic of old-growth (OG) and secondary forest on the Osa Peninsula, Costa Rica. The subfamily Scolytinae was expected to be the most species-rich and abundant. Ambrosia beetles were expected to have more generalist species than other curculionids. Old growth …


Effects Of Temperature Stress On Coral Fluorescence And Reflectance, Andrea Gomez Jan 2015

Effects Of Temperature Stress On Coral Fluorescence And Reflectance, Andrea Gomez

Dissertations and Theses

Around the world, climate change, land-based pollution and fishing impacts are recognized as principal threats to coral reef ecosystems. Sea surface temperatures, in particular, are expected to change dramatically over the next decades and result in high coral mortality in some regions. Through controlled experiments, I examined changes in coral fluorescence and reflectance in response to water temperature alterations to assess the potential of employing these signatures as a diagnostic tool to measure coral health. At the NOAA Coral Culture and Collaborative Research Facility, I conducted controlled laboratory-based heat stress experiments on three Caribbean species of coral: Acropora cervicornis, Orbicella …