Life Sciences Commons^™

The Impact Of The 2008 Financial Crisis On Food Security And Food Expenditures In Mexico: A Disproportionate Effect On The Vulnerable, Mireya Vilar-Compte, Sebastian Sandoval-Olascoaga, Ana Bernal-Stuart, Sandhya Shimoga, Arturo Vargas-Bustamante

Department of Public Health Scholarship and Creative Works

Objective The present paper investigated the impact of the 2008 financial crisis on food security in Mexico and how it disproportionally affected vulnerable households. Design A generalized ordered logistic regression was estimated to assess the impact of the crisis on households' food security status. An ordinary least squares and a quantile regression were estimated to evaluate the effect of the financial crisis on a continuous proxy measure of food security defined as the share of a household's current income devoted to food expenditures. Setting Both analyses were performed using pooled cross-sectional data from the Mexican National Household Income and Expenditure …

Street Drug Markets Beyond Favelas In Belo Horizonte, Brazil, Elenice De Souza De Souza Oliveira, Braulio Figueiredo Alves Silva, Marcos Oliveira Prates

Department of Justice Studies Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

This study examines whether social disorganization mechanisms that explain clusters of street drug markets in socially disorganized neighborhoods in developed countries can also help explain geographical patterns of drug dealing across neighborhoods in Belo Horizonte, Brazil. Data for this study includes drug arrests from 2007 to 2011 and socio demographic data from the 2010 Census. To examine the influence of exploratory variables on drug market locations, the Negative Binominal regression model was used at two levels of analysis—the Belo Horizonte city center and other neighborhoods including favelas. The findings show that a high hot spot of street drug markets located …

Developing A System To Arrest Transformation Using A Zebrafish Model For Melanomagenesis, Cory Haluska

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

The recent emergence of RNA-guided CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing system adapted from the natural defense mechanism found in bacteria and archaea has made the manipulation of genetic loci more feasible than ever. Using this technique we attempted to eliminate a target sequence of about 20 nucleotides from the promoter of the protein ICER (Inducible cAMP Early Repressor) located just upstream of the start sequence. ICER is a small transcription factor and supposed tumor suppressor protein that comes from the CREM (cAMP Responsive Element) gene. ICER has been found to be absent in tumor cells, marked for degradation by the ubiquitin-proteasomal pathway. …

Assessment Of Behavior, Home Range, Population Size, And Intermixing Among The Atlantic Bottlenose Dolphin, Tursiops Truncatus, In New Jersey, Colleen Marie Talty

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

Bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus) are known to exhibit a range of different social structures and habitat use profiles. To investigate the structure of the population off Cape May, NJ, photo identification techniques were employed. Between April 2013 and November 2014, 209 survey days with 989 individual sightings were observed from a platform of opportunity, the whale watching vessel the American Star. The primary goals of this study were to assess the population size in this area; determine whether or not the inshore ecotype were mixing with the offshore ecotype; determine home range size for dolphins sighted multiple times; and to …

Microbial Source Tracking Of Nonpoint Source Pollution In New Jersey Rivers, Matthew John Newton

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

The bodies of water of New Jersey serve many different purposes from recreational to agricultural and drinking to waste water treatment. Due to the vast diversity of usage and the many people that rely on these water bodies for everyday life it is essential that the health and quality of the water bodies is monitored and maintained regularly. Sources of pollution that affect the health of rivers, lakes and streams include biological, microbial, physical and chemical contaminants. All of these pollutions can impact the health of the water body, the organisms living in it and those who come into contact …

The Effects Of Crude And Pure Green Tea Polyphenols On Bacteria Biofilm Formation And Endospore Germination, Hassan Tahir

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

Over the past couple of decades humans have been combating the problem of multi-drug resistant microorganisms. Multi-drug resistant strains o f microorganisms have been causing not only problems for medical settings, but the world as well. Because of the continuous use of antibiotics within our time and age, there has been a huge increase in antibiotic resistant bacteria. In addition to the rise in multi-drug resistant bacteria over time, endospore cells have been causing increased levels of food-bourne illnesses. Thus, there is a need for novel antimicrobial agents from nature derived products as an alternative way to treat and control …

A Study Of Ret Dependent Transcriptional Changes Of Cell Signaling Proteins In Neuroblastoma Cells, Elizabeth Yvonne Flores

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

The ret proto-oncogene codes for a receptor tyrosine kinase involved in the pathogenesis of numerous developmental defects, particularly those in neural crest-derived structures leading to the regulation of cell proliferation, migration, differentiation and survival during embryogenesis. Constitutive activation or inactivation of the RET receptor results in the cancer syndrome Multiple Endocrine Neoplasia or Hirschsprung's disease, respectively. The importance of RET in these disease states has been well established. However, while many proteins associated with the RET signaling pathway have been identified, the transcriptional changes induced by the wild type receptor, particularly with respect to these signaling proteins in neuroblastoma cells, …

Historical Differences In School Term Length And Measured Blood Pressure: Contributions To Persistent Racial Disparities Among Us- Born Adults, Sze Yan Liu, Jennifer J. Manly, Benjamin D. Capistrant, M. Maria Glymour

Department of Public Health Scholarship and Creative Works

Introduction
Legally mandated segregation policies dictated significant differences in the educational experiences of black and white Americans through the first half of the 20th century, with markedly lower quality in schools attended by black children. We determined whether school term length, a common marker of school quality, was associated with blood pressure and hypertension among a cohort of older Americans who attended school during the de jure segregation era.
Methods
National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey I and II data were linked to state-level historical information on school term length. We used race and gender-stratified linear regression models adjusted for …

Clonal Diversity And Connectedness Of Turtle Grass (Thalassia Testudinum) Populations In A Unesco Biosphere Reserve, James Campanella, Paul Bologna, Maria Carvalho, John V. Smalley, Mohamedhakim Elakhrass, Robert Meredith, Nadia Zaben

Department of Biology Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

John, American Virgin Island turtlegrass are not clonal populations. John's populations have high connectivity to each other. We assessed Thalassia testudinum population genetics among four bays in St. John (United States Virgin Islands), a protected UNESCO Biosphere Reserve. Our results suggest that the St. John T. testudinum populations have (1) high sexual reproduction rates, (2) high levels of genetic diversity and low levels of inbreeding relative to other seagrass populations in less protected geographic areas, and (3) high connectivity when separated by up to 12. km. Pairwise FST values among the island populations ranged from 0.035 to 0.148. Additionally, we …

Characterization Of Ubiquitination Site Of Inducible Camp Early Repressor, Fanaye Woldeamanuel

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

Inducible cAMP Early Repressor (ICER) is a negative transcriptional regulator found in eukaryotic cells. ICER has a tumor suppressive activity and is absent in several human cancers. Cancer cells get rid of ICER by a post-translational modification known as ubiquitination. Ubiquitin molecules, which are very small regulatory proteins, attach to lysine residues of a target protein to induce either a proteolytic or a non-proteolytic pathway. Both pathways target ICER levels inside the nucleus. In the case of the proteolytic pathway, ICER gets sent to the proteasome where it gets degraded and in the non-proteolytic pathway, ICER gets sent to the …

Consumer Perceptions Of Calorie Content In Fast-Food Restaurant Meals Vs. Casual Dining Chain Meals, Gina Alexandra Pope

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

Background: The obesity epidemic in America is a growing cause for concern. Because frequency of dining outside the home is on the rise, accurate understanding of restaurants and the foods they serve is imperative. Purpose: It is the purpose of this study to determine how consumers perceive a food item in terms of calories and reputation at a fast-food restaurant, McDonald’s, in comparison to a similar food item at a casual dining restaurant chain, Applebee’s. This study fills a gap in the literature by providing a comparison of perception between fast food and full service restaurants menu offerings. Methods: Using …

In Vitro Synergistic Antiviral Activity Of Black Tea Theaflavins And Acyclovir On Herpes Simplex Virus Types 1 And 2 In A549 Cells, Cody James Berkefeld

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

Herpes simplex virus (HSV) is responsible for one of the most common infections within the population. The primary antiviral used against HSV infections are nucleoside analog drugs such as acyclovir and its deviates. However, in recent years the number of cases of drug resistant HSV has increased, resulting in interest for new novel treatments. Promising antiviral agents are theaflavins found within black tea derived from Camellia sinensis. These theaflavins include theaflavin (TF1), theaflavin-3-monogallate (TF2A), theaflavin-3’-monogallate (TF2B), and theaflavin-3-3’-digallate (TF3). Previous studies have supported that theaflavins from black tea, specifically TF3, inhibit the process of viral absorption. Due to this mode …

Generation And Characterization Ovarian Specific Promoter Sequences Of A Transgenic Zebrafish (Danio Rerio), Riham Makhoul

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

Inducible cAMP early repressor or, ICER, acts as a tumor suppressor with ovarian specific properties and moderates cAMP anti-proliferative actions. In this study, CYP19A1 was selected out of the four previously cloned ovarian specific promoters (CYP19A1, FSH, ZP3 and GDF9). The purpose of this experiment was to test whether a -500 bp fragment of the CYP19A1 can function in the ovaries as a specific promoter that can be used to express transgenes in the ovaries. For this study, we generated transgenic Zebrafish that expressed Green Fluorescent Protein (GFP) with the CYP19A1 promoter and proceeded to characterize by four different methods …

Upending The Social Ecological Model To Guide Health Promotion Efforts Toward Policy And Environmental Change, Lisa D. Lieberman, Shelley D. Golden, Kenneth R. Mcleroy, Lawrence W. Green, Jo Anne L. Earp

Department of Public Health Scholarship and Creative Works

Efforts to change policies and the environments in which people live, work, and play have gained increasing attention over the past several decades. Yet health promotion frameworks that illustrate the complex processes that produce health-enhancing structural changes are limited. Building on the experiences of health educators, community activists, and community-based researchers described in this supplement and elsewhere, as well as several political, social, and behavioral science theories, we propose a new framework to organize our thinking about producing policy, environmental, and other structural changes. We build on the social ecological model, a framework widely employed in public health research and …

The Effect Of Active Video Games On The Heart Rate Of Older Adults, Yeon Bai, Shahla M. Wunderlich, Diane M. Hanel

Department of Nutrition and Food Studies Scholarship and Creative Works

Background: Heart rate is used as a health biomarker. This aim of this study was to investigate the effects of playing active video games on the heart rate of older adults, in comparison to the heart rate after common table recreational activity.

Methods: An experimental study with 40 participants was conducted: a control group (n=20) participated in common Pokeno® card games; an experimental group (n=20) played WiiTM bowling. The participants’ pre- and post-activity heart rates were measured and compared between and within groups using t-tests.

Results: The findings signified an 11.9% increase (p

Conclusions: The inclusion of active video games …

Generation And Partial Characterization Of Testes Specific Promotor Sequences In Zebrafish (Danio Rerio), Rohini Rajendran

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

The cAMP response element modulator (CREM) regulates cAMP- responsive genes and is an important component of the cAMP mediated signal transduction in spermatogenesis. CREM has a regulatory relationship with Inducible cAMP early repressor (ICER) which acts as a tumor suppressor and is a dominant negative transcriptional repressor with gonadal specific properties. ICER is also known to moderate cAMP antiproliferative actions and has been targeted in the past for expression in the ovaries of transgenic mouse models to generate higher levels of ovulation. Earlier studies on mice lacking the CREM gene have shown severe impairment in spermatogenesis.

Enhanced Green Fluorescent Protein …