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Extracellular Matrix Proteins: Implications For Angiogenesis, Kent Edward Williams

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The extracellular matrix (ECM) is an essential requirement for maintaining permanent shape and rigidity in multicellular organisms. The ECM serves two main functions: scaffolding and signaling. Insoluble collagen and soluble proteoglycans, glycosaminoglycans (GAGs), and glycoproteins allow for water retention and flexibility. The signaling role of the ECM is essential for a multitude of events including vascular development and angiogenesis. Via interactions with vascular endothelial cells, proteins of the ECM can induce or repress angiogenesis.

The Effects Of Learning-Styles Information On The Achievement Of Community College Developmental Math Students, Kevin A. Hoeffner

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Four out of five Americans will require some postsecondary education. Therefore, a majority of population will return to a community college for retraining and personal growth (McCabe, 2003). Since the turn of this century, many studies have been conducted to examine the success and challenges of the relatively new community college system. One of the most significant challenges is the large percentage of the U.S. population requiring remedial coursework. Fifty-five percent of students entering Florida's postsecondary system require remediation. Of this large remedial population, only 51% will complete their preparatory classes. Students who do complete classes take an average of …

Toward An Applied Anthropology Of Gis: Spatial Analysis Of Adolescent Childbearing In Hillsborough And Pinellas Counties, Florida, Kathleen I. Maes

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This work investigates births to white, African American and Hispanic adolescents in Hillsborough and Pinellas Counties, Florida, from 1992 to 1997 in two age groups - 13 to 17 year-olds and 18 to 19 year-olds - using spatial statistical techniques along with key informant interviews to provide insights into the utility of the research findings. The research developed a method for estimating the adolescent population in inter-census years, which was used to determine denominators for calculating teen birth rates. It also developed a composite deprivation index using socioeconomic indicators at the census block group level. The index provided context for …

Properties Of Carbon Nanotubes Under External Factors: Adsorption, Mechanical Deformations, Defects, And External Electric Fields, Yaroslav Shtogun

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Carbon nanotubes have unique electronic, optical, mechanical, and transport properties which make them an important element of nanoscience and nanotechnology. However, successful application and integration of carbon nanotubes into new nanodevices requires fundamental understanding of their property changes under the influence of many external factors. This dissertation presents qualitative and quantitative theoretical understanding of property changes, while carbon nanotubes are exposed to the deformations, defects, external electric fields, and adsorption. Adsorption mechanisms due to Van der Waals dispersion forces are analyzed first for the interactions of graphitic materials and biological molecules with carbon nanotubes. In particular, the calculations are performed …

The Ethics Of The Ecology Of Fear Against The Nonspeciesist Paradigm: A Shift In The Aims Of Intervention In Nature, Oscar Horta

Between the Species

Humans often intervene in the wild for anthropocentric or environmental reasons. An example of such interventions is the reintroduction of wolves in places where they no longer live in order to create what has been called an “ecology of fear”, which is being currently discussed in places such as Scotland. In the first part of this paper I discuss the reasons for this measure and argue that they are not compatible with a nonspeciesist approach. Then, I claim that if we abandon a speciesist viewpoint we should change completely the way in which we should intervene in nature. Rather than …

Challenge Difficulty And Cardiovascular Responses In Mild Cognitive Impairment, Christopher Conley Stewart

All ETDs from UAB

This study examined the effect of challenge difficulty on cardiovascular responses in patients with Alzheimer's disease and amnestic mild cognitive impairment. It extended from a model characterizing the determinants and cardiovascular consequences of effort in people confronted with performance challenges. One component of this model holds that ability has the potential to accentuate, attenuate, or have no effect on cardiovascular responses. Specifically, lower ability should accentuate cardiovascular responses so long as performers' view a challenge possible and worthwhile. However, lower ability should attenuate cardiovascular responses when it leads to the perception that a challenge is excessively difficult or impossible. The …

Multi-Modal Reading For Low Level Readers, Jamie O'Neal

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The value of this research hinges on the idea that exchanging illustrations for descriptive text can provide appropriate schemas for students with reading difficulties and thereby improve their comprehension and vocabulary acquisition. The research in this dissertation is based on theories and earlier research in the fields of psychology, education, reading, and narratology. A review of these fields offers a variety of perspectives on the processes involved in reading and comprehension. These processes range from the physical systems involved in reading (e.g., early childhood development, eye movement) to the psychological systems, which include cognitive load theory as well as image …

Non-Calanoid Copepods At The Bermuda Atlantic Time-Series Study (Bats) Station: Community Structure And Ecology, 1995-1999, Hussain Ali Al-Mutairi

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Zooplankton were sampled on a monthly basis at the Bermuda Atlantic Time-series Study (BATS) site from January 1995 to December 1999. Samples were collected using a 1-m², 200 µm mesh net. The net sampled the water column in an oblique manner from the surface to a mean depth of 200 m. One day and one night tow from each cruise was examined microscopically to determine the community structure of the non-calanoid copepods. In addition, a three year set of nighttime samples were examined taken by 0.5-m², 20 and 35 µm mesh nets (1995-1996 and 1997, respectively) towed obliquely to 150 …

Synthesis Of Small Molecule Inhibitors Targeting Signal Transduction Pathways, Divya Ramamoorthy

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The main aim of the study described in this thesis is the development of small molecules as inhibitors targeting signal transduction pathways, thereby treating cancer. We attempted to synthesize compounds based on the hits obtained from high throughput screening of the Chemdiv diversity set compounds. Chapter One is a general introduction to cancer, history of chemotherapeutic drugs and an introduction to signal transduction pathways. The following two chapters briefly introduce the biological targets in the authors study. Chapter Two describes the role of B-cell lymphoma type xL (Bcl-xL), in apoptosis and the development of drugs targeting Bcl-xL. Examples of Bcl-xL …

Optimization And Characterization Of Lab-On-A-Chip Elements: Microfluidic Chambers And Microneedles, Puneet Khanna

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In this work, MEMS based fabrication is used to engineer multifaceted enhancements to microfluidic systems such as lab-on-a-chip devices. Two specific elements of microfluidic systems are the focus of this study: microfluidic chambers and microneedles. Microfluidic chambers, which are back-end passive elements, via proposed material and structural modifications, are shown to exhibit reduced non-specific DNA binding and enable increased cell lysis efficiency. Microneedles, which are front-end interfacing elements, have been fabricated in silicon and in silicon dioxide varieties. The geometry of silicon microneedles has been varied via DRIE processing to yield sharpened tips. Sharpening of microneedle tips provides reduced skin …

The Communicating Dance, Alison Plevey

Theses : Honours

Does dance have the ability to communicate universally to all observers at some level of human engagement? This paper discusses theatre dance as a human communicative medium, the characteristics of how it communicates and to a certain degree why and what it communicates. In doing so the intentions of the communicating dancer and choreographer are considered alongside that of the receptive and responsive audience. The thesis compiles a survey of textual sources pin pointing the unique communicative abilities of dance, as an artistic, expressive and meaningful form of non-verbal communication establishing suggestions of the ways it may be universally communicable.

Determination Of Decay Rates And Differential Survival Of Escherichia Coli And Enterococcus Spp. Strains Under Hydrodynamically Active Conditions Using Box-Pcr Typing, Phoebe West Koch

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Indicator organisms (IOs) such as Escherichia coli and Enterococcus spp. are used to predict the presence of pathogens in waters. Determining the relationships between environmental factors, IOs, and pathogens is a key to assessing water quality and ensuring public health, yet certain strains of E. coli and Enterococcus spp. survive for long periods in natural waters. Molecular subtyping, using repetitive extragenic palindromic DNA sequences (BOX-PCR), has been used to discriminate among environmental E. coli and Enterococcus spp. isolates. The reproducibility of BOX-PCR patterns varies with DNA purification methods; therefore, it is important to develop a standardized, rapid, high throughput DNA …

Productivity, Relevance And Natural Selection, Stuart Glennan

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

Recent papers by a number of philosophers have been concerned with the question of whether natural selection is a causal process, and if it is, whether the causes of selection are properties of individuals or properties of populations. I shall argue that much confusion in this debate arises because of a failure to distinguish between causal productivity and causal relevance. Causal productivity is a relation that holds between events connected via continuous causal processes, while causal relevance is a relationship that can hold between a variety of different kinds of facts and the events that counterfactually depend upon them. I …

Book Review: Forest Of Time: A Century Of Science At Wind River Experimental Forest, By Margaret Herring And Sarah Greene, Emily K. Brock

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Radical Religious Rebels: The Rise And Fall Of Jerry Falwell And The Moral Majority., Andrew Francis Bell

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In this thesis, I intend to illustrate the impact that Jerry Falwell had upon the rise of religious fundamentalism within the United States during the latter part of the 20th century. By elucidating the various factors that led Jerry Falwell from a little-known minister from Lynchburg, Virginia to becoming the figurehead of the movement known as the Religious Right, I wish to show how one of more controversial figures in both the religious and political spheres of contemporary American history became one of the more influential and infamous men of recent times. By focusing on the predecessors of Jerry Falwell …

Commencement Program 2008, Loma Linda University

Commencement Programs

CONTENTS

2 | 2008 Events of Commencement

3 | The Academic Procession

4 | Significance of Academic Regalia

5 | The Good Samaritan

6 | The Speakers

14 | The University Honorees

24 | The School Honorees

35 | The Programs

36 | School of Medicine

47 | School of Pharmacy

52 | School of Dentistry

62 | School of Science and Technology and School of Religion

70 | School of Nursing

76 | School of Allied Health Professions - Physical Therapy

82 | School of Allied Health Professions

91 | School of Public Health

Healing, Learning And Play, Kangana Bhatnagar

Theses and Dissertations

Research suggests that the first five years of life are critical for building the foundation for children’s success throughout their schooling and life. Throughout these first years of life there are a number of essential windows of opportunity during which certain kinds of stimuli are needed to help the brain develop and maintain critical connections necessary for learning. This project is a unification of a Child Development Center and a therapeutic center. This center includes children who suffer from bereavement; a broken home, death of a parent or child abuse. These children are provided with therapy by a specialist, and …

Kahn Chronicle: Spring 2008, Smith College, Kahn Liberal Arts Institute

Kahn Chronicle

Table of Contents:

The Kahn Institute "On the Road"
Announcements
Spotlight on Students
Interim Reports: Sustainable Houses, Homes and Communities; Undergrounds Underworlds
Spring 2008 Short-Term Projects
Updates on New Project Forms
Spotlight on Faculty
A Word From the Director

Oncolog Volume 53, Number 10, October 2008, Joe Munch, Sunita Patterson

OncoLog MD Anderson's Report to Physicians (All issues) Archives

• Pancreatic Cancer: The Prognosis Is Changing
• Delivering “The Guardian of the Genome”
• House Call: “Seeing” Cancer from the Outside
• Catching Pancreatic Cancer Early

Freedom To Err: The Idea Of Natural Selection In Politics, Schools, And Courts, Paul D. Carrington

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Bioinorganic Chemistry Of Copper-Containing Systems: From Type-3 Systems Pertinent To Alzheimer’S Disease To Mononuclear Hydrolysis Involved In Biological Development, Giordano Faustini Zimmerer Da Silva

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Although transition metals are essential for life, misregulation of redox-active metal uptake, delivery, storage, and excretion has been linked with a series of neurodegenerative disorders. Alzheimer's disease (AD) is considered an epidemic and is the most widespread of all forms of dementia. Copper ions found in large concentrations localized in amyloid-ß plaques in the brain of AD patients have been linked with the generation of reactive oxygen species which are suspected to be the culprits leading to neuronal cell death. Herein a series of mechanistic and spectroscopic studies elucidate the chemistry about the metal-centered oxidation of biomolecules, including catecholamine neurotransmitters …

Glyconanobiotics: Novel Carbohydrated Nanoparticle Polymers, Thotaha Wijayahewage Sampath Chrysantha Abeylath

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Carbohydrates on the cell surface conjugates to proteins and lipids and participates in biological processes as glycoconjugates. Carbohydrate functionalized nanoparticles (glyconanoparticles) constitute a good bio-mimetic model of carbohydrate presentation at the cell surface and are currently centered on many glycobiological and biomedical applications. The most of the applications have been reported using gold glyconanoparticles. A brief review of gold glyconanoparticles and some of their applications will be discussed in Chapter I. Although metallic, semiconductor and magnetic glyconanoparticles have been reported, no polyacrylate glyconanoparticles have yet to be described.

Chapter II describes the first preparation of carbohydrate functionalized polymer nanoparticles by …

2007 Ruby Yearbook, Ursinus College Senior Class

The Ruby Yearbooks, 1897-2020

A digitized copy of the 2007 Ruby, the Ursinus College yearbook.

Analysis Of E2f1 Target Genes Involved In Cell Cycle And Apoptosis, Scott N. Freeman

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

One of the main results of Rb-E2F pathway disruption is deregulation of the E2F family of transcription factors, which can lead to inappropriate proliferation, oncogenic transformation, or the induction of apoptosis. Given the potential negative biological effects associated with deregulated E2F activity, it is of great importance to study E2F targets that mediate these effects. In Part I of this manuscript, we identify the RhoBTB2 putative tumor suppressor gene as a direct physiological target of the E2F1 transcription factor. We find that RhoBTB2 is highly upregulated during mitosis due in part to E2F1, and that overexpression of RhoBTB2 increases the …

Teilhard And The Future Of Humanity, Thierry Meynard, S.J.

Religion

Fifty years after his death, the thought of the French scientist and Jesuit Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881–1955) continues to inspire new ways of understanding humanity’s future. Trained as a paleontologist and philosopher, Teilhard was an innovative synthesizer of science and religion, developing an idea of evolution as an unfolding of material and mental worlds into an integrated, holistic universe at what he called the Omega Point. His books, such as the bestselling The Phenomenon of Man, have influenced generations of ecologists, environmentalists, planners, and others concerned with the fate of the earth.

This book brings together original essays …

Ursinus Magazine, Fall 2006, Wendy Greenberg, Rick Difeliciantonio, Vic Brown, Shawn Witt, Winnifred Cutler, Ethel Barnhill, Harry Dochelli, Lynne Edwards, Ronald Tempest, Jill Yamma, Mark D. Ellison

Ursinus Magazine, 1995–Present

The Philip and Muriel Berman Museum of Art calendar • News flash: Campaign exceeds $115 million goal • Bomberger getting ready to take its place • The Ursinus Annual Fund is opening doors • Research was hot during summer at Ursinus: Summer Fellows • Myrin Library featured on magazine cover • Ursinus in the news • Ursinus commencement: Welcome, Ursinus' newest alumni! • Meet the Class of 2010: How a wild admissions season panned out • NSC: The alumni admissions effort recruits for Ursinus College • How to do almost anything better: Words of wisdom from Ursinus alumni • Highlights …

Mythcon 37 - The Map & The Territory: Maps And Landscapes In Fantasy, The Mythopoeic Society

Mythcon Programs

Held in Norman, OK (Aug 4-7, 2006), this conference focused on the maps and landscapes in fantasy. It includes a track on Native American Fantasy/Native Americans in Fantasy.

The Creativity And Aging Study: The Impact Of Professionally Conducted Cultural Programs On Older Adults, Gene D. Cohen, The Center On Aging, Health & Humanities, The George Washington University (Gw)

National Collaborative on Aging Faculty Publications

Executive Summary

In 2001, the National Endowment for the Arts developed a cooperative agreement with The George Washington University to conduct a multisite national study with the aim of measuring the impact of professionally conducted community based cultural programs on the general health, mental health, and social activities of older persons, age 65 and older. Referred to as the Creativity and Aging Study, the project’s formal title is “The Impact of Professionally Conducted Cultural Programs on Older Adults”. No previous study of this nature using an experimental design and a control group had been carried out. The study takes place …

Antibiotic-Conjugated Polyacrylate Nanoparticles: New Opportunities For Development Of Anti-Mrsa Agents, Yang Wang

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

N-Thiolated β-lactams represent a novel family of antibacterial agents, whose in vitro activity is confined largely to Staphylococcus species, including multidrug-resistant forms of S. aureus. N-Thiolated β-lactams have recently been shown to possess intriguing biological activities which are addressed in Chapter II. Current development of nanoparticles as a new drug delivery vehicle is described in Chapter III. Chapter IV and V described the current research in our laboratories focusing on the synthesis and characterization of emulsified polyacrylate/polyacrylamide nanoparticle antibacterials for drug delivery of water-insoluble antibiotics. These nanoparticles can be prepared in aqueous media directly from acrylate/acrylamide monomers through free …

Evolutionary Genetics Of The Family Placobranchidae (Mollusca: Gastropoda: Opisthobranchia: Sacoglossa), Anna Lee Bass

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Members of the family Placobranchidae have been the focus of numerous studies because of their interesting physiological adaptations (kleptochemistry and kleptoplasty) and ecological associations with marine algae. More than 100 species have been described since the 1800's, but no determination of phylogenetic relationships in the family has occurred. DNA sequences from two mitochondrial genes (large subunit ribosomal and cytochrome c oxidase subunit I) and one nuclear gene (Histone 3) were used to reconstruct relationships among 34 nominal species within the Placobranchidae. Strong support for terminal nodes was found using Bayesian phylogenetic methods; however, a "soft" polytomy was detected at internal …