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Identification Of The Mechanisms Through Which Botanicals Attenuate Pathogenesis Of Human Diseases, Esraah Alharris

Theses and Dissertations

Plant products have been used for a long time in treatment of diseases. In fact, more than half of approved medicines are derived from plants or other natural products. Even though the synthetic drugs are effective in treating many human diseases, there is no cure against several clinical disorders. Moreover, a significant number of diseases can be prevented thereby causing less burden on societal healthcare costs as well as promoting healthy lifestyles. Thus, botanicals offer a unique opportunity to explore novel compounds to prevent and treat various clinical disorders as well as understand their mode of action so that new …

Effects Of Different Retail Packaging Materials On The Shelflife Of Dehusked Foxtail Millet, Pooran Pragnya Joshi, Ravikumar Biradar, Prakash Mathad, Vikas Jha

Journal of Applied Packaging Research

Millets are in the family of cereals grown globally with differential importance across continents and within regions of the world. Cereals are staple foods for a large proportion of the world population. The present investigation was carried out to find out the effect of different retail packaging material on the shelf-life of dehusked foxtail millet. The foxtail millet was procured at local Raichur market. Physical properties of dehusked foxtail millet viz., Particle density, Bulk density, Angle of repose, Coefficient of internal friction, Coefficient of external friction, Length, Breadth, Thickness, size and Spherecity were found to be 1.34 g/cc , 0.87 …

Suitability Of Active And Intelligent Packaging For Local And Organic Food – A Case Study In Southern Finland, Sara Paunonen, Marja Pitkänen, Mika Vähä-Nissi, Ville Leminen, Mika Kainusalmi

Journal of Applied Packaging Research

This study explores the suitability of innovative packaging for local and organic food. Attitudes and opinions in local and organic food chains in Southern Finland were collected via eighteen semi-structural interviews. The respondents were small-scale producers and processors of fish, meat, berries, and mushrooms, wholesalers, retailers, and institutional kitchens. The aim of this study was to understand factors promoting and preventing the penetration of innovative packaging solutions into the organic and local food market. A clear majority (89%) of respondents considered active and intelligent solutions to be equally suitable for local and organic food as for conventional food. However, less …

An Efficient Process For Co-Production Of Γ-Aminobutyric Acid And Probiotic Bacillus Subtilis Cells, Hongbo Wang, Jinge Huang, Lei Sun, Fuchao Xu, Wei Zhang, Jixun Zhan

Biological Engineering Faculty Publications

This study was to establish an integrated process for the co-production of γ-aminobutyric acid (GABA) and live probiotics. Six probiotic bacteria were screened and Bacillus subtilis ATCC 6051 showed the highest GABA-producing capacity. The optimal temperature and initial pH value for GABA production in B. subtilis were found to be 30 °C and 8.0, respectively. A variety of carbon and nitrogen sources were tested, and potato starch and peptone were the preferred carbon and nitrogen sources for GABA production, respectively. The concentrations of carbon source, nitrogen source and substrate (sodium L-glutamate) were then optimized using the response surface methodology. The …

Sociodemographics And Access To Organic And Local Food: A Case Study Of New Orleans, Louisiana, Chuo Li, Amir Ghiasi, Xiaopeng Li, Guangqing Chi

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications

This study examined the association between physical accessibility to organic and local food, and sociodemographic factors in New Orleans, Louisiana. Spatial regression models were used to investigate how sociodemographic variables such as income, race/ethnicity, education, and age correlate with driving, bicycling, and walking distances to stores that sell organic or local food. The distances were calculated from GIS and real-time speed information from Google Maps. The results indicated that physical access to such stores is positively associated with population density, median housing value, education, non-Hispanic Blacks, and Hispanics, and is negatively associated with median housing age. We found no disparities …

Where There Is No Engineer - Designing For Community Resilience, Liam Mccarton, Sean O'Hogain

Books/Book Chapters

Where There Is No Engineer – Designing for Community Resilience” is a design initiative coordinated by the Development Technology in the Community (DTC) Research Group, Technological University Dublin (DIT) and Engineers Without Borders (EWB) Ireland.

The programme is delivered in partnership with various development partners and Engineers Ireland. It provides participants with the opportunity to learn about design, teamwork and communication through real, inspiring, sustainable and crosscultural development projects. By participating in the programme, students and professionals will have the opportunity to design creative solutions to real life development projects. This initiative formed part of the DIT team submission which …

Electrochemical Microsensors For In Situ Monitoring Of Chemical Compounds In Engineered And Natural Aquatic Systems, Jared Church

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The adaption of needle-type electrochemical microsensor (or microelectrode) techniques to environmental science and engineering systems has transformed how we understand mass transport in biotic and abiotic processes. Their small tip diameter (5-20μm) makes them a unique experimental tool for direct measurements of analytes with high spatial and temporal resolutions, providing a quantitative analysis of flux, diffusion, and reaction rate at a microscale that cannot be obtained using conventional analytical tools. However, their applications have been primarily limited to understanding mass transport dynamics and kinetics in biofilms. With the advancement of sensor fabrication and utilization techniques, their potential applications can surpass …

An Enhancement Of Light Reflectance Spectroscopy As A Modality For The Detection Of Positive Surgical Margins In Radical Prostatectomy, Zengxing Pang

Bioengineering Theses - Archive

Light Reflectance Spectroscopy (LRS) is an imaging method that has shown increasingly promising evidence in its ability to detect various forms of cancer tissues. Our previous studies have illustrated the LRS modality’s capacity to differentiate normal and cancerous prostate tissues, specifically in its effectiveness in distinguishing cancer tissues classified 4+3 and 4+4 in Gleason Score. Despite having shown sufficient sensitivity and specificity towards prostate cancer detection, the pre-existing imaging system remains impractical for its intended clinical application of detecting positive surgical margins during prostatectomy. Two of the biggest challenges in the current equipment include lack of mobility and slow data …

Antimicrobial Efficacy And Safety Of A Novel Gas Plasma-Activated Catheter Lock Solution, Sudhir Bhatt, Poonam Mehta, Chen Chen, Dayle A. Daines, Leonard A. Mermel, Hai-Lan Chen, Michael G. Kong

Bioelectrics Publications

Antimicrobial lock solutions are important for prevention of microbial colonization and infection of long-term central venous catheters. We investigated the efficacy and safety of a novel antibiotic-free lock solution formed from gas plasma-activated disinfectant (PAD). Using a luminal biofilm model, viable cells of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, Staphylococcus epidermidis, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, and Candida albicans in mature biofilms were reduced by 6 to 8 orders of magnitude with a PAD lock for 60 min. Subsequent 24-h incubation of PAD-treated samples resulted in no detectable regrowth of viable bacteria or fungi. As a comparison, the use of a minocycline-EDTA-ethanol lock solution for 60 …

Spam Elimination And Bias Correction : Ensuring Label Quality In Crowdsourced Tasks., Lingyu Lyu

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Crowdsourcing is proposed as a powerful mechanism for accomplishing large scale tasks via anonymous workers online. It has been demonstrated as an effective and important approach for collecting labeled data in application domains which require human intelligence, such as image labeling, video annotation, natural language processing, etc. Despite the promises, one big challenge still exists in crowdsourcing systems: the difficulty of controlling the quality of crowds. The workers usually have diverse education levels, personal preferences, and motivations, leading to unknown work performance while completing a crowdsourced task. Among them, some are reliable, and some might provide noisy feedback. It is …

Methods And Metrics To Measure And Predict The Social Impact Of Engineered Products, Phillip Douglas Stevenson

Theses and Dissertations

More than ever before, engineers are creating products for developing countries. One of the purposes of these products is to improve the consumer's quality of life. Currently, there is no established method of measuring the social impact of these types of products. As a result, engineers have used their own metrics to assess their product's impact, if at all. Some of the common metrics used include products sold and revenue, which measure the financial success of a product without recognizing the social successes or failures it might have. In this thesis I introduce a potential metric, the Product Impact Metric …

Neuroimaging Biomarkers Of Mtor Inhibition On Vascular And Metabolic Functions In Aging Brain And Alzheimer’S Disease, Jennifer Lee, Lucille M. Yanckello, David Ma, Jared D. Hoffman, Ishita Parikh, Scott Thalman, Bjoern Bauer, Anika M. S. Hartz, Fahmeed Hyder, Ai-Ling Lin

Pharmacology and Nutritional Sciences Faculty Publications

The mechanistic target of rapamycin (mTOR) is a nutrient sensor of eukaryotic cells. Inhibition of mechanistic mTOR signaling can increase life and health span in various species via interventions that include rapamycin and caloric restriction (CR). In the central nervous system, mTOR inhibition demonstrates neuroprotective patterns in aging and Alzheimer’s disease (AD) by preserving mitochondrial function and reducing amyloid beta retention. However, the effects of mTOR inhibition for in vivo brain physiology remain largely unknown. Here, we review recent findings of in vivo metabolic and vascular measures using non-invasive, multimodal neuroimaging methods in rodent models for brain aging and AD. …

Whole Cell Cross-Linking To Discover Host-Microbe Protein Cognate Receptor/Ligand Pairs, Bart C. Weimer, Poyin Chen, Prerak T. Desai, Dong Chen, Jigna Shah

Biological Engineering Faculty Publications

Bacterial surface ligands mediate interactions with the host cell during association that determines the specific outcome for the host–microbe association. The association begins with receptors on the host cell binding ligands on the microbial cell to form a partnership that initiates responses in both cells. Methods to determine the specific cognate partnerships are lacking. Determining these molecular interactions between the host and microbial surfaces are difficult, yet crucial in defining biologically important events that are triggered during association of the microbiome, and critical in defining the initiating signal from the host membrane that results in pathology or commensal association. In …

Artificial Gravity As A Countermeasure To The Cardiovascular Deconditioning Of Spaceflight: Gender Perspectives, Joyce M. Evans, Charles F. Knapp, Nandu Goswami

Biomedical Engineering Faculty Publications

Space flight-induced physiological deconditioning resulting from decreased gravitational input, decreased plasma volume, and disruption of regulatory mechanisms is a significant problem in returning astronauts as well as in normal aging. Here we review effects of a promising countermeasure on cardiovascular systems of healthy men and women undergoing Earth-based models of space-flight. This countermeasure is produced by a centrifuge and called artificial gravity (AG). Numerous studies have determined that AG improves orthostatic tolerance (as assessed by various protocols) of healthy ambulatory men, of men deconditioned by bed rest or by immersion (both wet and dry) and, in one case, following spaceflight. …

Prevascularization Of 3d Printed Bone Scaffolds By Bioactive Hydrogels And Cell Co-Culture, Mitchell Kuss, Shaohua Wu, Ying Wang, Jason B. Untrauer, Wenlong Li, Jung Yul Lim, Bin Duan

Department of Mechanical and Materials Engineering: Faculty Publications

Vascularization is a fundamental prerequisite for large bone construct development and remains one of the main challenges of bone tissue engineering. Our current study presents the combination of 3D printing technique with a hydrogel-based prevascularization strategy to generate prevascularized bone constructs. Human adipose derived mesenchymal stem cells (ADMSC) and human umbilical vein endothelial cells (HUVEC) were encapsulated within our bioactive hydrogels, and the effects of culture conditions on in vitro vascularization were determined. We further generated composite constructs by forming 3D printed polycaprolactone/hydroxyapatite scaffolds coated with cell-laden hydrogels and determined how the co-culture affected vascularization and osteogenesis. It was demonstrated …

Comparison Of Nitrogen Fertigation Management Strategies For Center-Pivot Irrigated Maize In The Sub-Humid Area Of China, Jingjing Li, Wenjing Zang, Yaojun Li, Derek M. Heeren, Haijun Yan

Department of Agricultural and Biological Systems Engineering: Faculty Publications

In the sub-humid region of Northeast China, increasing use of center-pivot irrigation systems has caused increased interest in sprinkler fertigation technology in maize production to improve nitrogen (N) use efficiency and protect the environment. However, the lack of fertigation strategies for maize cultivation restrains the adoption of sprinkler fertigation technology. A field experiment was carried out in a sub-humid region of Northeast China on maize to determine the effect of different fertigation management strategies on plant growth, grain yield and nitrate content in the soil during the maize growing season. Three N rates (200, 160, and 120 kg N ha …

The Effect Of Destoning And Enzymatic Pretreatments On The Biofuel Production From Olive Cake, Patrick Tai

Master's Theses

More than 16,000 tons of olive cake was produced in the United States in 2017. Olive cake is a by-product of olive oil extraction, which has limited animal feed potential, and poses an environmental threat when landfilled due to its high organic load and polyphenol content. This residue has potential for biofuel (bioethanol and biomethane) production because it is rich in polysaccharides such as pectin, hemicellulose, and cellulose. Yet, olive cake contains olive stones that can impede its conversion to biofuel. Therefore, two methods of destoning, centrifugation and screening by horizontal screw press, were first compared. Both methods removed an …

Numerical Modelling Of Red Blood Cell Structural Mechanics, Mingzhu Chen

Doctoral

Red blood cells (RBCs) are the most abundant cellular elements in blood and their main function is the oxygen delivery. Structurally RBCs are highly deformable membrane-bounded liquid-core capsules. The deformability is critical to fulfill the functionality and is greatly affected by the RBC structural mechanics. Due to the small size, in vivo/vitro studies of the RBCs are often impossible where, being an alternative, numerical modellings stand out to be a robust approach to investigate the the RBC. In the recent years the spring-particle-based (SP) RBC modelling becomes very popular due to the simplicity and extensive modelling capability over the conventional …

Processing Off-Balanced Ore From Central Kyzylkum In Enriched Superphosphate And Ammophosphate Fertilizers, А.А Rasulov, О.А Badalova, Sh.S Namazov, А.R Seytnazarov, B.М Beglov

Chemical Technology, Control and Management

Process of receiving two types of fertilizers by division into liquid and solid phases of products of fosfornosernokislotny expansion of the mineralized mass (MM) Central Kyzylkumov is studied. In that case, mass ratio WPA : ММ was 100:15 while amount of H2SO4mng ranged 2 tо 5 g. The distribution rate of components (Р2О5, СаО, MgO, AI2O3, Fe2O3, N, SO3) on phases was estimated. It was shown that the enriched superphosphate with good physicochemical properties could be obtained from the solid phase while concentrated ammophosphate exceeding ammophos by quality considerably based on the liquid phase.

Development Of A Vaccine Production Platform For Poultry Diseases In Africa: Newcastle Disease Virus Non-Replicative Adenovirus-Vectored Vaccine, Omar Farnos, Amine Kamen, Héla Kallel, Khaled Trabelsi, Martha Yami, Esayas Gelaye

Vaccine Technology VII

Poultry are a vital village livestock playing an important economic and nutritional role in the livelihoods of poor rural households in developing countries, including the Sub-Saharan Africa. Poultry production in Africa is threatened by infectious diseases such as Newcastle Disease (ND), which is highly contagious and endemic, with recurrent outbreaks that provoke heavy losses every year. ND is caused by the Newcastle disease virus (NDV), a negative-sense single-stranded RNA virus from the genus Avulavirus, family Paramyxoviridae. In particular, ND is one of the major problems in village chickens in most parts of Ethiopia where commercial poultry is routinely vaccinated …

Circadiomics: Circadian Omic Web Portal, Nicholas Ceglia, Yu Liu, Siwei Chen, Forest Agostinelli, Kristin Eckel-Mahan, Paolo Sassone-Corsi, Pierre Baldi

Faculty Publications

Circadian rhythms play a fundamental role at all levels of biological organization. Understanding the mechanisms and implications of circadian oscillations continues to be the focus of intense research. However, there has been no comprehensive and integrated way for accessing and mining all circadian omic datasets. The latest release of CircadiOmics (http://circadiomics.ics.uci.edu) fills this gap for providing the most comprehensive web server for studying circadian data. The newly updated version contains high-throughput 227 omic datasets corresponding to over 74 million measurements sampled over 24 h cycles. Users can visualize and compare oscillatory trajectories across species, tissues and conditions. Periodicity statistics (e.g. …

Caregiver Perception And The Role Of Seasonality In Under-Five Childhood Diarrhea Incidence In Svay Rieng Province, Cambodia, Brian S. Wells

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Diarrheal disease has long been known to be a burden to children worldwide. Although child mortality rates as a result of diarrhea have decreased over the past two decades, overall diarrhea incidence has remained relatively stable. In Cambodia, diarrhea was the third most prevalent outpatient diagnosis for children under five in 2012, with a reported incidence rate of 12 per 100 children, up from 7 per 100 children in 2008 (Ministry of Planning Cambodia, 2012). Cambodia is an agricultural country with 80% of the population living in rural areas (National Institute of Statistics Ministry of Planning, 2013). Many are also …

Snap-N-Snack: A Food Image Recognition Application, Stephen Hoff, Patterson Jaffurs, Michael Enriquez, Quintin Wilde

Computer Science and Engineering Senior Theses

Many people desire to be informed about the nutritional specifics of the food they consume. Current popular dietary tracking methods are too slow and tedious for a lot of consumers due to requiring manual data entry for everything eaten. We propose a system that will take advantage of image recognition and the internal camera of Android phones to identify food based off of a picture of a user’s plate. Over the course the last year, we trained an object detection model with images of different types of food, built a mobile application around it, and tested their integration and performance. …

Metabolic Patterning On A Chip: Towards In Vitro Liver Zonation Of Primary Rat And Human Hepatocytes, Young Bok (Abraham) Kang, Jinsu Eo, Safak Mert, Martin L. Yarmush, O. Berk Usta

Faculty Publications - Biomedical, Mechanical, and Civil Engineering

An important number of healthy and diseased tissues shows spatial variations in their metabolic capacities across the tissue. The liver is a prime example of such heterogeneity where the gradual changes in various metabolic activities across the liver sinusoid is termed as “zonation” of the liver. Here, we introduce the Metabolic Patterning on a Chip (MPOC) platform capable of dynamically creating metabolic patterns across the length of a microchamber of liver tissue via actively enforced gradients of various metabolic modulators such as hormones and inducers. Using this platform, we were able to create continuous liver tissues of both rat and …

The Effect Of Nd On Mechanical Properties And Corrosion Performance Of Biodegradable Mg-5%Zn Alloy, Lilach Elkaiam, Orly Hakimi, Jeremy Goldman, Eli Aghion

Michigan Tech Publications, Part 1

Mg based implants are limited by their poor strength, ductility, and corrosion performance in physiological environments, drawbacks further compounded by their premature loss of mechanical integrity and evolution of harmful hydrogen gas. Neodymium additions to magnesium have been shown to improve mechanical properties through precipitation and solid solution hardening. Therefore, the present study incorporated Nd additions (up to 3%) into a promising Mg-5%Zn-0.13%Y-0.35%Zr alloy to improve mechanical properties and corrosion resistance. The microstructure evaluation of a series of alloys was performed using optical microscopy, scanning electron microscopy (SEM), and X-ray diffraction analysis. The mechanical properties were examined in terms of …

Milkguard: Low-Cost, Polymer-Based Sensor For The Detection Of Escherichia Coli In Donated Human Breast Milk, Maggie May, Nicholas Kikuchi, Matthew Zweber

Bioengineering Senior Theses

Breast milk, the gold standard for infant nutrition, could prevent up to 13% of child deaths worldwide. However, many mothers are unable to breastfeed due to health conditions and other factors. Because of this, a network of more than 500+ human milk banks, which collect and distribute donated breast milk to infants, have emerged worldwide. However, operational costs to ensure the safety of this milk remain time-intensive and costly.

There are no existing diagnostics for rapid and on-site detection of bacterial contaminants in donated milk. Currently, many milk banks send samples to outside laboratories for bacterial culturing tests, which take …

Anomalous 304 Stainless Steel Mechanical Properties In Medical Guide Wires, Andrew Joseph Freeman

Materials Engineering

Stainless steel medical guide wire cores, processed by Abbott Vascular, are returning anomalous mechanical properties upon strain hardening and heat treatment. As theory dictates, mechanical strength properties increase with strain hardening, and decrease with an annealing treatment. The opposite response is being observed. This is counter intuitive to fundamental materials knowledge, and a perfect materials engineering paradox. This project was designed to characterize these behaviors, and attempt to determine causation. To accomplish this, tensile testing of all processing steps mapped the mechanical property evolution of the wire. Published literature research revealed the potential of nitrogen and chromium solid state diffusion …

Comparison Of Autonomic Control Of Blood Pressure During Standing And Artificial Gravity Induced Via Short-Arm Human Centrifuge, Ajay K. Verma, Da Xu, Michelle Bruner, Amanmeet Garg, Nandu Goswami, Andrew P. Blaber, Kouhyar Tavakolian

Electrical Engineering Faculty Publications

Autonomic control of blood pressure is essential toward maintenance of cerebral perfusion during standing, failure of which could lead to fainting. Long-term exposure to microgravity deteriorates autonomic control of blood pressure. Consequently, astronauts experience orthostatic intolerance on their return to gravitational environment. Ground-based studies suggest sporadic training in artificial hypergravity can mitigate spaceflight deconditioning. In this regard, short-arm human centrifuge (SAHC), capable of creating artificial hypergravity of different g-loads, provides an auspicious training tool. Here, we compare autonomic control of blood pressure during centrifugation creating 1-g and 2-g at feet with standing in natural gravity. Continuous blood pressure was acquired …

Powering A Biosensor Using Wearable Thermoelectric Technology, Anneliese Bals, Noah Barnes, Rafael Bravo, Nicolas Garcia, Joseph O'Bryan, Dylan Santana

Interdisciplinary Design Senior Theses

Wearable medical devices such as insulin pumps, glucose monitors, hearing aids, and electrocardiograms provide necessary medical aid and monitoring to millions of users worldwide. These battery powered devices require battery replacement and frequent charging that reduces the freedom and peace of mind of users. Additionally, the significant portion of the world without access to electricity is unable to use these medical devices as they have no means to power them constantly. Wearable thermoelectric power generation aims to charge these medical device batteries without a need for grid power.

Our team has developing a wristband prototype that uses body heat, ambient …

Developing An Integrated Model For The Corn, Ethanol, And Beef Systems Using A Loosely Coupled Web Framework, Ryan Anderson

Department of Agricultural and Biological Systems Engineering: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

With the global population approaching 9 billion people by the year 2050, the world’s food, energy, and water (FEW) resources must be used more intelligently to provide for everyone. While we understand how individual FEW systems behave using modeling, we cannot understand the full environmental and production impacts of decisions in each system without understanding how they are all linked together. An approach to coupling these systems is starting with identifying a few highly interconnected FEW systems. The corn, ethanol, and beef systems are large economic and agricultural drivers in the Midwest United States and are highly linked. Many individual …