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Open Access Dissertations

2014

Articles 1 - 10 of 10

Full-Text Articles in Medicine and Health Sciences

Host Cell Death In Legionella Pneumophila Pathogenesis And Immunity, Wenhan Zhu Oct 2014

Host Cell Death In Legionella Pneumophila Pathogenesis And Immunity, Wenhan Zhu

Open Access Dissertations

Legionella pneumophila is an intracellular pathogen that causes a severe, atypical pneumonia termed Legionnaires' disease. Upon entering the host cell, L. pneumophila resides in a membrane-bound vacuole, in which the bacterium evades lysosomal fusion and replicates. The establishment of the vacuole requires the Dot/Icm (Defect in organelle trafficking/ intracellular multiplication) transport system, which translocates a large number of substrates into host cells to re-orchestrate various cellular processes, such as intracellular trafficking, protein synthesis and host cell death pathways. Therefore, a key step in understanding the biology of Legionella is to dissect the mechanisms of action of the Dot/Icm substrates. By …

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Coordination Between Hand And Trunk Movements In A Fitts' Law Task, Fuwen Cai Oct 2014

Coordination Between Hand And Trunk Movements In A Fitts' Law Task, Fuwen Cai

Open Access Dissertations

It has been shown that limb movements are coupled in space and time in a bimanual Fitts' task. The present study was designed to examine whether coordination of hand and trunk share some sets of coordinative principles with bimanual coordination. Participants (n = 28) were required to perform a Fitts' task with the dominant hand and a Fitts' task with the trunk. These tasks were performed separately or together. The task required moving the trunk, the dominant hand or both, such that the cursor/cursors on a computer screen was/were moved from the starting position/positions to the designated target/targets as fast …

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Coupled Fluid-Thermal Analysis Of Low-Pressure Sublimation And Condensation With Application To Freeze-Drying, Arnab Ganguly Oct 2014

Coupled Fluid-Thermal Analysis Of Low-Pressure Sublimation And Condensation With Application To Freeze-Drying, Arnab Ganguly

Open Access Dissertations

Freeze-drying is a low-pressure, low-temperature condensation pumping process widely used in the manufacture of bio-pharmaceuticals for removal of solvents by sublimation. The goal of the process is to provide a stable dosage form by removing the solvent in such a way that the sensitive molecular structure of the active substance is least disturbed. The vacuum environment presents unique challenges for understanding and controlling heat and mass transfer in the process. As a result, the design of equipment and associated processes has been largely empirical, slow and inefficient.^ A comprehensive simulation framework to predict both, process and equipment performance is critical …

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Quantitative Modeling Of Spatiotemporal Systems: Simulation Of Biological Systems And Analysis Of Error Metric Effects On Model Fitting, James Hengenius Oct 2014

Quantitative Modeling Of Spatiotemporal Systems: Simulation Of Biological Systems And Analysis Of Error Metric Effects On Model Fitting, James Hengenius

Open Access Dissertations

Understanding the biophysical processes underlying biological and biotechnological processes is a prerequisite for therapeutic treatments and technological innovation. With the exponential growth of computational processing speed, experimental findings in these fields have been complemented by dynamic simulations of developmental signaling and genetic interactions. Models provide means to evaluate "emergent" properties of systems sometimes inaccessible by reductionist approaches, making them test beds for biological inference and technological refinement.^ The complexity and interconnectedness of biological processes pose special challenges to modelers; biological models typically possess a large number of unknown parameters relative to their counterparts in other physical sciences. Estimating these parameter …

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African Starchy Foods, Gastric Emptying, And Starch Digestion In Malian Stunted Children, Fatimata Cisse Oct 2014

African Starchy Foods, Gastric Emptying, And Starch Digestion In Malian Stunted Children, Fatimata Cisse

Open Access Dissertations

Starch serves as the main energy source in cereal and tuber-rich diets, and its glycemic response profile has been associated with health-related conditions. Sorghum and millet are known to have relatively low starch digestibility, a potentially desirable property for controlling blood glucose response and providing sustained energy. Gastric emptying rates of traditional sorghum and millet-based African foods of the Sahelian region (couscous, thick and thin porridges made from millet and/or sorghum) were compared to those of non-traditional "modern" foods that are mostly consumed in urban areas using a non-invasive 13C-labelled octanoic acid breath test in healthy volunteers. The obtained results …

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Prediction Of Parturition And Dystocia In Holstein-Friesian Cattle, And Cesarean Section In Dystocic Beef Cattle, Wen Han Mark Hiew Oct 2014

Prediction Of Parturition And Dystocia In Holstein-Friesian Cattle, And Cesarean Section In Dystocic Beef Cattle, Wen Han Mark Hiew

Open Access Dissertations

Dystocia is a major problem in the dairy industry as it causes livestock and economic loss. It is more frequently seen in primiparous cattle compared to their multiparous counterparts due to their smaller stature and the slow maturation of pelvic dimensions. In some instances, human intervention of the parturition process is imperative to avoid pain, injury, and mortality of the neonate and the dam. The ability to accurately predict dystocia and the time of parturition will ensure that timely assistance can be given to animals that are of high risk of dystocia.^ The present thesis contains four studies that explore …

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Evaluation Of Yttrium-90 Positron Emission Tomography Dosimetry, Katherine N. Tapp Oct 2014

Evaluation Of Yttrium-90 Positron Emission Tomography Dosimetry, Katherine N. Tapp

Open Access Dissertations

Purpose: Radioembolization is a novel treatment which utilizes the liver's unique dual system blood supply to trap yttrium-90 (90Y) microspheres in microvasculature near liver tumors. Radioembolization dose planning and dosimetry are based on crude, inaccurate assumptions due to the lack of knowledge of patient specific 90Y microsphere distribution. In recent years, the very small 3.1867e-5 internal pair production decay branch of 90Y has been shown to allow for positron emission tomography (PET) imaging following radioembolization. This work explores the accuracy and limitation of 90Y PET imaging due to the extremely low signal to noise (SNR) …

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Structured Deterministic Models Applied To Malaria And Other Endemic Diseases, Katia Patricia Vogt Geisse Oct 2014

Structured Deterministic Models Applied To Malaria And Other Endemic Diseases, Katia Patricia Vogt Geisse

Open Access Dissertations

This thesis includes modeling studies on three structured deterministic models. These models are used to study the disease dynamics of malaria or the joint disease dynamics of HIV and HSV-2. Each of the models includes multiple components containing individuals in various epidemiological classes for the purpose of addressing questions that are of interests to biologists and epidemiologists. Some of the compartments have a continuous age-structure, which is necessary for studying the specific biological questions under investigation.^ In Chapter 2 a chronological-age structured deterministic model for malaria is presented. The model includes the human and mosquito populations with the human population …

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Current Steering And Electrode Spanning With Partial Tripolar Stimulation Mode In Cochlear Implants, Ching-Chih Wu Oct 2014

Current Steering And Electrode Spanning With Partial Tripolar Stimulation Mode In Cochlear Implants, Ching-Chih Wu

Open Access Dissertations

Cochlear implants (CIs) partially restore hearing sensation to profoundly deaf people by electrically stimulating the surviving auditory neurons. However, CI users perform poorly in challenging listening tasks such as speech recognition in noise and Cochlear implants (CIs) partially restore hearing sensation to profoundly deaf people by electrically stimulating the surviving auditory neurons. However, CI users perform poorly in challenging listening tasks such as speech recognition in noise and music perception, possibly due to the small number of implanted electrodes and the large current spread of electric stimulation. Although current spread may be reduced using partial tripolar (pTP) stimulation mode, the …

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Dj-1 And Atp13a2: Two Proteins Involved In Parkinson’S Disease, Josephat M Asiago Jan 2014

Dj-1 And Atp13a2: Two Proteins Involved In Parkinson’S Disease, Josephat M Asiago

Open Access Dissertations

Parkinson's disease (PD) is the second most common neurodegenerative disorder after Alzheimer's disease, affecting approximately 0.3% of the total U.S. population, and its prevalence increases with age. Two neuropathological hallmarks of PD are the loss of dopaminergic neurons in the substantia nigra pars compacta, a region in the midbrain involved in initiating and sustaining movement, and the presence of cytosolic inclusions called Lewy bodies (LBs) in various brain regions. LBs are enriched with fibrillar forms of the presynaptic protein &agr;-synuclein (aSyn). Two autosomal recessive genes implicated in familial PD are PARK9, encoding the P-type ATPase ATP13A2, a lysosomal ATPase; and …

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