Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Utilizing Ultra-Performance Chromatography High-Resolution Mass Spectrometry To Investigate Fatty Acid Mediated Antibiotic Tolerance, Brittni Woodall

Doctoral Dissertations

The lipid membrane is the first component necessary to sustain life. To maintain homeostasis, segregate cellular machinery, provide protection from the environment, and reproduce, an organism must establish a boundary in which the processes can occur. Throughout the last two decades, research has propelled our knowledge of lipid membranes much beyond original hypotheses. Once thought of to be static and uniform, the understanding of the lipid membrane has evolved to encompass a structure that is responsive, unique, and intricately constructed by the organism itself. By chance or by choice, organisms adapt the lipid membrane according to the environment for which …

Anxiety-Like Behavior In C57bl/6j Mice Is Sexually Dimorphic And Altered By Buprenorphine, Ohm Sharma

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

Development Of Surface-Modified Liposomes For Drug Delivery Applications, Megan Louise Qualls

Doctoral Dissertations

Liposomes are spherical vesicles composed of a lipid bilayer membrane that assembles around an internal aqueous core. This duality gives liposomes the ability to encapsulate both hydrophobic cargo within the lipid bilayer and hydrophilic cargo in the aqueous core, making them versatile molecular carriers for drug delivery. Liposome platforms have many advantages and are promising drug delivery carriers, and research is ongoing to improve their designs for continued clinical applications. Many liposome types have been developed, but further work is needed to improve surface modification, site-specific targeting, and triggered cargo release in order to further the therapeutic applications of these …

A Machine Learning Approach For Predicting Clinical Trial Patient Enrollment In Drug Development Portfolio Demand Planning, Ahmed Shoieb

Masters Theses

One of the biggest challenges the clinical research industry currently faces is the accurate forecasting of patient enrollment (namely if and when a clinical trial will achieve full enrollment), as the stochastic behavior of enrollment can significantly contribute to delays in the development of new drugs, increases in duration and costs of clinical trials, and the over- or under- estimation of clinical supply. This study proposes a Machine Learning model using a Fully Convolutional Network (FCN) that is trained on a dataset of 100,000 patient enrollment data points including patient age, patient gender, patient disease, investigational product, study phase, blinded …

Intra-Skeletal Variation In Stable Isotopes Through Non-Destructive Approaches: Applications Of The Patterns Of Skeletal Remodeling To Biological Anthropology, Armando Anzellini

Doctoral Dissertations

Stable isotope analysis is a well-established method in biological anthropology used to deliver data on residence, diet, and life history. Samples for these analyses are often collected from the diaphyses of long bones with an assumption of an expected rate of turnover between five and ten years, depending on the skeletal element. However, the biological foundations of this assumption are still uncertain, especially concerning the intra-skeletal and intra-element variation of isotopic signatures that may relate to patterns of remodeling. Exploring these gaps in intra-element isotopic variation requires fine-grained work using multiple bones from multiple individuals, but such work is limited …

Design And Development Of The Urban Population Health Observatory To Improve Disease Surveillance And Response, Whitney Brakefield

Doctoral Dissertations

Chronic and infectious diseases have a profound impact on the quality and length of life of populations that suffer from these conditions. Scientists, physicians, and health officials are seeking innovative approaches to decrease the morbidity and mortality of deadly diseases. Incorporating artificial intelligence and data science techniques across the health science domain could improve disease surveillance, intervention planning, and policymaking. In this dissertation, we describe the design and development of the Urban Population Health Observatory (UPHO), an explainable knowledge-based multimodal big data analytics platform. A common challenge for conducting multimodal big data analytics is integrating multidimensional heterogeneous data sources, which …

Agent-Based Dynamics Of A Spahr Opioid Model On Social Network Structures, Owen Queen, W. C. Strickland, Leigh B. Pearcy

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

Association Between Stream Impairment By Mercury And Superfund Sites In The Conterminous Usa, Karessa L. Manning

Masters Theses

Mercury is a natural element that can cause harm to the brain, heart, kidneys, lungs, and immune system, especially to fetuses developing in the womb. Many natural and anthropogenic factors contribute to mercury in the environment, such as geologic deposits, landfills, gold and silver mining operations, cement production, and atmospheric deposition. Mercury has been identified as a contaminant of concern at many National Priority List (NPL) sites, however, studies on contamination at NPL sites are often only conducted on a local level. This study was to analyze the potential connection between mercury-contaminated NPL sites and the presence of mercury impaired …

Design And Development Of A Quartz Crystal Microbalance Immunosensor For Exosomes, Wesley Cox

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

Using Poincaré And Coefficient Analyses To Assess Changes In Variability In Respiration As A Function Of Leptin Status, Sex, And Buprenorphine In Mice, Wateen Hussein Alami

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

Walking To Recovery - The Effects Of Postsurgical Ambulation On Patient Recovery Times, Trent William Stethen

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

Improving Ventricular Catheter Design Through Computational Fluid Dynamics, Sofy Hefets Weisenberg

Masters Theses

Cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) shunts are fully implantable medical devices that are used to treat patients suffering from conditions characterized by elevated intracranial pressure, such as hydrocephalus. In cases of shunt failure or malfunction, patients are often required to endure one or more revision surgeries to replace all or part of the shunt. One of the primary causes of CSF shunt failure is obstruction of the ventricular catheter, a component of the shunt system implanted directly into the brain's ventricular system. This work aims to improve the design of ventricular catheters in order to reduce the incidence of catheter obstruction and …

Developing An Optimal Model For Infant Home Visitation, Isaac Atuahene

Doctoral Dissertations

The United States, Great Britain, Denmark, Canada and many other countries have accepted home visitation (HV) as a promising strategy for interventions for infants after births and for their mothers. Prior HV studies have focused on theoretical foundations, evaluations of programs, cost/benefit analysis and cost estimation by using hospital/payer/insurance data to prove its effectiveness and high cost. As governments and private organizations continue to fund HVs, it is an opportune time to develop and formulate operations research (OR) models of HV coverage, quality and cost so they might be used in program implementation as done for adult home healthcare (HHC) …

Evaluating The Effects Of Standardized Patient Care Pathways On Clinical Outcomes, Anna V. Romanova

Doctoral Dissertations

The main focus of this study is to create a standardized approach to evaluating the impact of the patient care pathways across all major disease categories and key outcome measures in a hospital setting when randomized clinical trials are not feasible. Toward this goal I identify statistical methods, control factors, and adjustments that can correct for potential confounding in observational studies. I investigate the efficiency of existing bias correction methods under varying conditions of imbalanced samples through a Monte Carlo simulation. The simulation results are then utilized in a case study for one of the largest primary diagnosis areas, chronic …

Biodegradable Nano-Hybrid Polymer Composite Networks For Regulating Cellular Behavior, Charles Henley Sprague

Masters Theses

Photo-crosslinkable polymeric biomaterials have emerged in the field of biomedical research to promote tissue regeneration. For example, scaffolds that can be crosslinked and hardened in situ have been known to make suitable implant alternatives. Since injectable and photo-crosslinkable biomaterials offer the advantage of being minimally invasive, they have emerged to compete with autografts, a current highly invasive method to repair diseased tissue. A series of novel photo-crosslinkable, injectable, and biodegradable nano-hybrid polymers consisting of poly(ε-caprolactone fumarate) (PCLF) and polyhedral oligomeric silsesquioxane (POSS) has been synthesized in our laboratory via polycondensation. To engineer the material properties of the nano-hybrid networks, varied …

Population Modeling For Resource Allocation And Antimicrobial Stewardship, Jason Bintz

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation contains two types of population models with applications in conservation biology and epidemiology. In particular, it considers models for resource allocation and antimicrobial stewardship.

In a population model with a parabolic differential equation and density dependent growth, we study the problem of allocating resources to maximize the net benefit in the conservation of a single species while the cost of the resource allocation is minimized. The net benefit is measured in terms of maximizing population abundance and the goal of maximizing abundance is divided between the goal of maximizing the overall abundance across space and time and the …

The Phenomenon Of Outbound Medical Tourism In The United States, Tanner Douglas Cabbage

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

Associations Of Total Activity Counts And Physical Activity Intensity Levels With The Metabolic Syndrome: A Structural Equation Modeling Approach, Dana Lizbeth Wolff

Doctoral Dissertations

To clarify the protective benefits of physical activity (PA), epidemiologists and public health researchers continue to seek improved methods of assessing PA. In particular, accelerometers have gained acceptance with researchers as they provide reliable estimates of PA and can record both the amount and intensity of ambulatory movement. However, there is concern that accelerometer data reduction techniques may not provide quantitatively accurate measurements of time spent in various PA intensity categories. One way to circumvent these inaccuracies is to use the accelerometer-derived total activity counts (TAC), which is a more direct expression of what the monitor records.

In order to …

Syntheses Of Precursors To Fluorine-18 Labeled Pet Imaging Agents, Lindsay B. Boling

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

Design And Synthesis Of Novel Sultams As Non-Nucleoside Inhibitors Of Hiv Reverse Transcriptase, Brian Chadwick Lecroix

Doctoral Dissertations

The compound 2-methyl-3-phenyl-2,3-dihydro-1,2-benzisothiazole 1,1-dioxide (NSC 108406) was identified as an HIV-1 reverse transcriptase inhibitor by the National Cancer Institute. Using this lead, the Baker group has developed a series of analogues with various groups at the 3-position that show a spectrum of biological activities. In the end, the substituents used could not compare to the biological activity of the inhibitor efavirenz (Sustiva^® [trademark]), and so it was decided to synthesize sultams with alkylethynyl substituents at the 3-position of the sultams in an attempt to mimic the activity of efavirenz.

Previous research analyzed the proposed novel sultams in the modeling …

Geographic And Temporal Epidemiology Of Campylobacteriosis, Jennifer Weisent

Doctoral Dissertations

Campylobacteriosis is a leading cause of gastroenteritis in the United States. The focus of this research was to (i) analyze and predict spatial and temporal patterns and associations for campylobacteriosis risk and (ii) compare the utility of advanced modeling methods. Laboratory-confirmed Campylobacter case data, obtained from the Foodborne Diseases Active Surveillance Network were used in all investigations.

We compared the accuracy of forecasting techniques for campylobacteriosis risk in Minnesota, Oregon and Georgia and found that time series regression, decomposition, and Box-Jenkins Autoregressive Integrated Moving Averages reliably predict monthly risk of infection for campylobacteriosis. Decomposition provided the fastest, most accurate, user-friendly …

Comparison Of Methodologies For Synthesis Of 3-(Cyclopropylethynyl)Benzisothiazole 1,1-Dioxide, Rachel Lee Naramore

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

Development Of A Novel Technique For Predicting Tumor Response In Adaptive Radiation Therapy, Rebecca Marie Seibert

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation concentrates on the introduction of Predictive Adaptive Radiation Therapy (PART) as a potential method to improve cancer treatment. PART is a novel technique that utilizes volumetric image-guided radiation therapy treatment (IGRT) data to actively predict the tumor response to therapy and estimate clinical outcomes during the course of treatment. To implement PART, a patient database containing IGRT image data for 40 lesions obtained from patients who were imaged and treated with helical tomotherapy was constructed. The data was then modeled using locally weighted regression. This model predicts future tumor volumes and masses and the associated confidence intervals based …

Latin Hypercube Sampling And Partial Rank Correlation Coefficient Analysis Applied To An Optimal Control Problem, Boloye Gomero

Masters Theses

Latin Hypercube Sampling/Partial Rank Correlation Coefficient (LHS/PRCC) sensitivity analysis is an efficient tool often employed in uncertainty analysis to explore the entire parameter space of a model. Despite the usefulness of LHS/PRCC sensitivity analysis in studying the sensitivity of a model to the parameter values used in the model, no study has been done that fully integrates Latin Hypercube sampling with optimal control analysis.

In this thesis, we couple the optimal control numerical procedure to the LHS/PRCC procedure and perform a simultaneous examination of the effects of all the LHS parameter on the objective functional value. To test the effectiveness …

Geographic Disparities Associated With Stroke And Myocardial Infarction In East Tennessee, Ashley Pedigo Golden

Doctoral Dissertations

Stroke and myocardial infarction (MI) are serious conditions whose burdens vary by socio-demographic and geographic factors. Although several studies have investigated and identified disparities in burdens of these conditions at the county and state levels, little is known regarding their geographic epidemiology at the neighborhood level. Both conditions require emergency treatments and therefore timely geographic accessibility to appropriate care is critical. Investigation of disparities in geographic accessibility to stroke and MI care and the role of Emergency Medical Services (EMS) in reducing treatment delays are vital in improving health outcomes. Therefore, the objectives of this work were to: (i) classify …

A Geospatial Based Decision Framework For Extending Marssim Regulatory Principles Into The Subsurface, Robert Nathan Stewart

Doctoral Dissertations

The Multi-Agency Radiological Site Survey Investigation Manual (MARSSIM) is a regulatory guidance document regarding compliance evaluation of radiologically contaminated soils and buildings (USNRC, 2000). Compliance is determined by comparing radiological measurements to established limits using a combination of hypothesis testing and scanning measurements. Scanning allows investigators to identify localized pockets of contamination missed during sampling and allows investigators to assess radiological exposure at different spatial scales. Scale is important in radiological dose assessment as regulatory limits can vary with the size of the contaminated area and sites are often evaluated at more than one scale (USNRC, 2000). Unfortunately, scanning is …

Some Reactions Of Phenothiazine And Certain Benzophenothiazines, John Charles Gilmer

Doctoral Dissertations

Summary

The consideration of the medical importance of phenothiazine derivatives and the known cancer chemotherapeutic value of the nitrogen mustards made the synthesis of some nitrogen mustard derivatives of the phenothiazines of particular interest. In the course of this research the N-{2-[bis-(2-chloroethyl)amino]ethyl} derivatives of phenothiazine, 7H-benzo[c]phenothiazine, 7H-dibenzo[c, h] phenothiazine, and 14H-dibenzo[a, h] phenothiazine were synthesized for anticancer evaluation. Also submitted to the Cancer Chemotherapy National Service Center for testing were the N-(2-chloroethyl) monofunctional nitrogen mustard derivatives of the first three phenothiazines mentioned above.