Digital Commons Network^™

Development Of Iron Oxide Nanozyme For Cancer Therapy, Zhongchao Yi

Theses and Dissertations--Biomedical Engineering

Cancer therapies that leverage reactive oxygen species (ROS) have shown potential for cancer inhibition due to their ability to induce oxidative stress in tumor cells. Iron oxide nanoparticles (IONPs) have garnered significant attention as a promising platform for ROS-dependent disease treatment, owing to their remarkable biocompatibility and Fenton catalytic activity. However, the low catalytic activity of IONPs has been a major hurdle in their clinical translation. To overcome this challenge, IONPs of different compositions are examined for their Fenton reaction under pharmacologically relevant conditions in this work. The results show that wüstite (Fe_1-xO) nanoparticles exhibit higher catalytic activity …

Analysis And Improvement Of The Kentucky Transportation Cabinet’S Serious Injury And Fatality Program, Arun Subedi

Theses and Dissertations--Civil Engineering

Serious Injuries and Fatalities (SIFs) within construction and maintenance industries indicate severe vulnerabilities within workplace safety, and their prevention requires the highest priority. SIFs usually occur due to systemic failures, and proactive steps must be taken to identify and neutralize high-risk scenarios. Kentucky Transportation Cabinet (KYTC) has recently implemented a safety management system called BOOTS, for improving incident reporting and analysis along with SIFs. This study identifies gaps in KYTC's SIF reporting framework and provides analysis on recurring incident trends utilizing the incidents already reported in the system. While current practice in KYTC relies on event-based decision tree when classifying …

Digital Innovation Roadmap For Construction Industry: Bridging The Gap For Future, Nisa Zahin

Theses and Dissertations--Civil Engineering

Digitalization has considerable value in the digital transformation of the construction business. It means the use of digital technologies to create revenue, improve business, increase profit and sustainability, and create an environment for digital business whereby digital information is at the core. As such, digital transformation requires skills that involve extracting and exchanging data and analyzing and converting that data into actionable information. In addition to technological solutions, a paramount need is to ensure that the people using these solutions and the processes used to integrate, coordinate between teams, and continuously improve the use of technology are in place. Therefore, …

Advancing Combinatorial Screening Of Refractory High Entropy Alloys Through Intrinsic Ductility Assessment Via Thin Film Fragmentation Testing, Taohid Bin Nur Tuhser

Theses and Dissertations--Chemical and Materials Engineering

High Entropy Alloys (HEAs), also known as Multiprincipal Element Alloys (MPEAs), represent a paradigm shift in alloy design. Unlike traditional practices that limit compositions to the edges of phase diagrams, HEAs exploit equiatomic mixing of five or more elements at the center of phase diagrams to maximize configurational entropy. This unconventional approach exponentially expands the spectrum of potential alloy compositions, rendering conventional experimental methods inadequate for exploring this extensive compositional space.

In response to these challenges, the scientific community has shown a growing interest in high-throughput techniques, encompassing both computational and experimental domains. Particularly, Refractory High Entropy Alloys (RHEAs) have …

Language Models For Rare Disease Information Extraction: Empirical Insights And Model Comparisons, Shashank Gupta

Theses and Dissertations--Computer Science

End-to-end relation extraction (E2ERE) is a crucial task in natural language processing (NLP) that involves identifying and classifying semantic relationships between entities in text. This thesis compares three paradigms for end-to-end relation extraction (E2ERE) in biomedicine, focusing on rare diseases with discontinuous and nested entities. We evaluate Named Entity Recognition (NER) to Relation Extraction (RE) pipelines, sequence-to-sequence models, and generative pre-trained transformer (GPT) models using the RareDis information extraction dataset. Our findings indicate that pipeline models are the most effective, followed closely by sequence-to-sequence models. GPT models, despite having eight times as many parameters, perform worse than sequence-to-sequence models and …

The Effect Of Visual Signaling On Psychomotor Learning: An Explanatory Mixed Methods Study In Physical Therapy Education, Julie Pfeiffer

Theses and Dissertations--Education Sciences

The signaling principle states that people learn better when cues are used to highlight important information in a multimedia presentation. Prior research has shown that visual signaling improves learning by directing the learner’s attention to the relevant information of the instruction, improving the learner’s ability to select essential words and pictures. While the visual signaling principle has been applied to learning in the cognitive domain, the effect of visual signaling on learning within the psychomotor domain is limited. The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of the signaling principle on learning psychomotor skills from multimedia instruction, specifically …

The Aesthetics Of Environmental Risk In Paolo Bacigalupi’S The Windup Girl And The Water Knife, David Schwartz

Theses and Dissertations--English

Any work of environmentally oriented fiction that seeks to represent the wide-reaching effects of climate change is faced with the problem of scale. These texts must render visible change which is at once ubiquitous and microscopic, along with the cascade of side-effects generated in the wake of rising temperature, rising sea levels, and winnowing biodiversity. In short order, these texts must fully imagine what it means to live within the modern global risk society. Borrowing this sociological model from the late Ulrich Beck, I analyze the literary work of Paolo Bacigalupi, one of the foremost authors in the growing genre …

Trust And Knowing In Nineteenth-Century American Literature: Fictional Genres And Metacognitive Disruptions, Jessica Marie Van Gilder

Theses and Dissertations--English

This dissertation investigates how constructions of trust can be undermined or reinforced by examining trust’s entanglement with our compulsive and subjective desire to know in nineteenth-century American literature. Specifically, I analyze how different fictional genres – satire, historical romance, fantastic, and gothic – respond to our desire to know through the types of trust fictional texts feature and construct with the reader. In doing so, I demonstrate how genres of fiction in nineteenth-century America function as dynamic social contracts that amplify and undermine the reader’s trust in larger sociopolitical systems (e.g., national identity) and the epistemologies that underpin those systems …

Writing White Women: White (Supremacist) Feminism In American Literature And Culture, Post Suffrage To Post Hillary (1920–2020s), Jannell C. Mcconnell Parsons

Theses and Dissertations--English

Recent critical texts by Jessie Daniels, Mikki Kendall, and more frame the histories of mainstream white feminism in ways that highlight its ongoing complicity with white supremacy and its maintenance of racist structures and systems. In conversation with these current scholarly as well as mainstream cultural conversations about white feminism that have been happening with more frequency since 2016, this project turns to post-suffrage narratives of white womanhood to historicize the modern narratives we tell about feminism’s history. Each chapter of this project considers a 1920s or 1930s literary narrative alongside current literary and cultural narratives as I explore the …

Effects Of Neonatal Estradiol Treatment On Regulating Sexual Differentiation Of Daily Rhythms Underlying Diet-Induced Obesity In Female Mice, Samuel Nwadialo

Theses and Dissertations--Biology

Sex differences of the brain and behavior often require the combination of organizational and activational effects of sex hormones. The activational effects of estrogens in adult female mice protect daily eating and activity rhythms from disruption by high-fat diet feeding and inhibit diet-induced obesity. However, male mice have disrupted eating rhythms when fed high-fat diet and this causes obesity. Treatment of adult male mice with estradiol does not protect rhythms from disruption by high-fat diet, as it does in females. In this study, we sought to determine whether the organizational effects of estradiol masculinize the daily eating and activity rhythms …

Investigations Across Biology And Education: Exploring The Gut Microbiome Of Freshwater Mussels And Understanding Undergraduate Biology Student Motivation, Mary Foley

Theses and Dissertations--Biology

A PhD aims to make a unique contribution to the current body of knowledge while developing as an independent researcher and critical thinker. This dissertation covers a wide range of topics, from microbiome analysis to biology education. Although there is no broad overarching research theme, all the chapters are connected by the process of scientific inquiry and by their contribution to the completion of a PhD.

Chapter One serves as a comprehensive literature review, delving into the standard methods of measuring the health of at-risk species. It describes direct measures of health (e.g., birth and death rates) crucial for predicting …

All Eyes On The Spiny Mouse: An Investigation Into Acomys Dimidiatus As A Model For Retinal Biology And Regeneration, Jessica D. Bills

Theses and Dissertations--Biology

The retina is a complex tissue with six types of neurons, supported by an intrinsic glia cell, that work in concert to input a visual stimulus and relay a visual message to the brain. Efficient communication between neurons is vital to this process and each neuron plays a significant role in vision. When retinal neurons degenerate, that visual signal is lost. Degenerative eye diseases affect the neurons of the retina in millions of people world-wide and can ultimately lead to blindness. While treatments are evolving, most are designed to prevent further damage; the field has yet to piece together how …

Crisis, Genre, And The Informatic Infrastructure Of The Critical Path Aids Project In Philadelphia's Early Epidemic, Sid Feinberg

Theses and Dissertations--Geography

The Critical Path AIDS Project was a grassroots information network that distributed AIDS-related information related to biomedicine, social services, and politics. I explore the ways the project made sense of the shattering social service and care landscapes they emerged within and responded to. I situate Critical Path’s work within Philadelphia’s splintering care infrastructures and the experience of crisis Lauren Berlant argues structures perception of neoliberal life. I focus on the ways that Critical Path’s articulation of crisis and spatial re-orientation pull on the modernist design work of Buckminster Fuller. Fuller’s design work formed a framework through which the project constructed …

A Geography Of Transgender Belonging In Louisville, Kentucky, Lj Mcallister

Theses and Dissertations--Geography

Louisville, Kentucky is home to a surprisingly robust – and complex – transgender community. This study uses qualitative data from interviews, collaborative maps, and archival research to analyze a geography of belonging for transgender residents in the city. It discusses how the twelve participants negotiate their relationships with the conservative, “red” state of Kentucky, as well as the geographical decision-making they use to navigate Louisville’s many neighborhoods. Ultimately, this thesis draws attention to the ways in which prejudice shapes the landscape of belonging for transgender life in Derby City.

Bicategorical Character Theory, Travis Wheeler

Theses and Dissertations--Mathematics

In 2007, Nora Ganter and Mikhail Kapranov defined the categorical trace, which they used to define the categorical character of a 2-representation. In 2008, Kate Ponto defined a shadow functor for bicategories. With the shadow functor, Dr. Ponto defined the bicategorical trace, which is a generalization of the symmetric monoidal trace for bicategories. How are these two notions of trace related to one another? We’ve used bicategorical traces to define a character theory for 2-representations, and the categorical character is an example.

Advanced Mathematical Graph-Based Machine Learning And Deep Learning Models For Drug Design, Farjana Tasnim Mukta

Theses and Dissertations--Mathematics

Drug discovery is a highly complicated and time-consuming process. One of the main challenges in drug development is predicting whether a drug-like molecule will interact with a specific target protein. This prediction accelerates target validation and drug development. Recent research in biomolecular sciences has shown significant interest in algebraic graph-based models for representing molecular complexes and predicting drug-target binding affinity. In this thesis, we present algebraic graph-based molecular representations to create data-driven scoring functions (SF) using extended atom types to capture wide-range interactions between targets and drug candidates. Our model employs multiscale weighted colored subgraphs for the protein-ligand complex, colored …

Essays On The Economics Of Entrepreneurship, Nicholas Graff

Theses and Dissertations--Economics

This dissertation consists of three chapters related to the economics of entrepreneurship. The second chapter focuses on the business performance of necessity entrepreneurs, specifically focusing on job creation and earnings. The third chapter investigates the large and persistent earnings differences between self-employed men and women, finding women earn less in self-employment because of different choices of industry, number of hours worked, and differences in business capital. The fourth chapter investigates whether the black-white self-employment gap explains the black-white wealth gap.

Evaluating The Early Impacts Of The Snap Online Purchasing Pilot, Kyle Jones

Theses and Dissertations--Economics

This dissertation consists of three chapters that evaluate how a change in the redemption of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits impacted grocery purchasing behavior and food consumption to provide some of the first estimates of the impacts from the pilot. The SNAP Online Purchasing Pilot (OPP) allowed recipients to use their benefits online for participating retailers which was initially planned for 8 participating pilot states with a few participating retailers but massively expanded during the COVID-19 pandemic. The first two chapters evaluate how the SNAP OPP impacts grocery purchasing behavior with the first chapter evaluating before the COVID-19 pandemic and …

Modulating The Mtor Pathway Using Inducible Retrogradely Transported Aavs As A Novel Approach To Improve Motor Recovery In Spinal Cord Injury, Christopher Bosse-Joseph

Theses and Dissertations--Medical Sciences

Spinal cord injury poses multiple regeneration barriers, including neuronal-intrinsic and extrinsic factors. Overcoming these barriers has stood as a longstanding challenge in neuroscience. A well-studied mechanism to promote spinal cord regeneration and locomotor recovery is activating the PI3K/mTOR pathway by knocking out phosphatase and tensin homolog protein (PTEN). PTEN knockout (PTEN-KO) studies have traditionally used adeno-associated virus (AAV) viral vectors to improve functional recovery. The use of traditional AAV serotypes to induce PTEN-KO has shown promise to improve functional recovery in rodent models; however, these approaches show significant limitations for translational utility. Firstly, the use of traditional AAV serotypes to …

The Role Of Intracellular Growth During The Systemic Spread Of Listeria Monocytogenes, Jamila S. Tucker

Theses and Dissertations--Microbiology, Immunology, and Molecular Genetics

Listeria monocytogenes is a facultative intracellular pathogen transmitted through the consumption of contaminated food products. Typically, infections range from mild, self-limiting gastroenteritis to life-threatening systemic infections; however, the events that occur in the gut to allow for this spread are unclear.

The focus of my thesis aims to determine how L. monocytogenes escape the mesenteric lymph nodes (MLN), the final barrier to systemic spread for both commensal and pathogenic bacteria in the gut. I have shown that intracellular replication of L. monocytogenes in an as-yet-unidentified cell type is essential for the colonization and dissemination of the bacteria from the MLN. …

Effects Of Pancreatic Amylin On The Peripheral And Cns Immune Response In A Model Of Type-2 Diabetic Brain Injury, Edric Da'shon Winford

Theses and Dissertations--Neuroscience

Type-2 diabetes (T2D) is a metabolic disorder that increases the risk for cerebrovascular disease and dementia and is associated with the progression of Alzheimer's Disease; however, the mechanisms responsible for T2D-associated dementia are still poorly understood. T2D leads to alterations of the innate and adaptive immune response that contribute to its progression, but how these cells contribute to cognitive decline during T2D is unknown. As there are no approved therapeutics for T2D that modulate the immune response, it is important that we investigate how peripheral immune cells contribute to cognitive decline during T2D. Amylin is an amyloidogenic hormone synthesized and …

The Effect Of Estrogen And A Mitochondrial Uncoupling Prodrug On Traumatic Brain Injury-Induced Dysfunction In Mice., Olivia J. Kalimon

Theses and Dissertations--Neuroscience

A large percent of both clinical and pre-clinical traumatic brain injury (TBI) studies report better outcomes females after severe injury compared to males. Mitochondrial dysfunction is a well-characterized driver of secondary injury and an attractive neurotherapeutic target; though, there is limited research available on mitochondrial dysfunction in females. However, a few studies have shown total mitochondria from the cortex of females appear protected from TBI-induced bioenergetic dysfunction. These results were replicated in these studies so further characterization was performed. Additionally, protein expression of some oxidative phosphorylation (OXPHOS) complexes were elevated in the uninjured cortex of females relative to uninjured males, …

Caenorhabditis Elegans Rapgef Promotes Synaptic Development Through A Small G Protein Signaling Cascade, Reagan Em Lamb

Theses and Dissertations--Neuroscience

Synaptic dysfunction is a major contributor toward the development of many neurological disorders. For proper development, synapses require a series of signaling pathways to guide them, but not all the mechanisms underlying these processes are understood. Here, we used the neuromuscular junction of Caenorhabditis elegans as a model circuitry for examining underlying pathways that mediate proper development of synapses. We hypothesized that the C. elegans RapGEF2 and RapGEF6 orthologue, PXF-1, contributed toward development of cholinergic synapses at the neuromuscular junction. Using behavioral assays and fluorescence microscopy, we found that pxf-1 mutant animals had decreased neuromuscular junction function and decreased synaptic …

Contributions Of The Replication Initiator Protein Dnaa To Physiology And Virulence Of The Lyme Disease Spirochete, Andrew Krusenstjerna

Theses and Dissertations--Microbiology, Immunology, and Molecular Genetics

Borrelia burgdorferi, the etiological agent of Lyme disease, is the most prevalent vector-borne disease in the United States. The spirochetal population is naturally maintained by consistently cycling between Ixodid ticks and small vertebrates. To survive within these diverse niches, B. burgdorferi has evolved a unique physiology and regulatory network to sense and respond to environmental fluxes. Replication is a hallmark of the Lyme spirochete’s enzootic life cycle, specifically at the nymphal tick-to-vertebrate interface. The mechanisms and regulatory schema for the basic cellular processes in B. burgdorferi, or indeed any member of the phylum spirochaetota, are largely unknown. The central hypothesis …

Enlarged Perivascular Spaces Are A Clinically Relevant Neuroimaging Biomarker Of Cerebral Small Vessel Disease, Timothy Justin Libecap

Theses and Dissertations--Neuroscience

Vascular contributions to cognitive impairment and dementia (VCID) represents the intersection between cerebrovascular disease and cognitive decline. Cerebral small vessel disease (cSVD) is an important risk factor that may precede the onset of VCID by years. cSVD is characterized by in-vivo neuroimaging biomarkers including enlarged perivascular spaces (ePVS). PVS are the site of interchange between interstitial fluid (ISF) and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) which is believed to play a role in the removal of brain waste. Reduced clearance may lead to enlargement of the PVS and subsequent accumulation of toxic solutes characteristic of neurodegeneration. Given the presence of ePVS in brain …

The Role Of Dystrophic Microglia In Aging And Disease, Ryan K. Shahidehpour

Theses and Dissertations--Neuroscience

Microglia are the primary immune cells of the central nervous system and are crucial in maintaining homeostasis and defense from disease and injury in the brain. Recent genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have also highlighted microglia as a central player in Alzheimer’s disease (AD). However, the mechanisms of microglia’s influence are poorly understood. Traditionally, microglial subtypes characterized physiologically as “reactive” or “activated” have been linked with disease and injury in the brain. However, morphologically, a recently described microglia category known as “dystrophic,” characterized structurally by fragmented processes and cytoplasmic decay is believed to be more strongly associated with aging and neurodegeneration. …

Characterizing Age-Associated Cd19+ B Cells After Stroke In Aged Male And Female Mice Reveals Sex-Dependent Functional Recovery, Katie Colson

Theses and Dissertations--Neuroscience

Age-Associated B cells (ABCs) are atypical memory B cells commonly expressing CD11b, CD11c, and T-bet. We hypothesized that aged female mice would have worse functional outcomes after stroke due to higher brain-localized ABCs. We identified 6 ABC subsets expressed in the brain, with higher levels in uninjured animals versus 3 weeks after stroke. Contradictory to my hypothesis, aged uninjured males with higher numbers of Classical ABCs (CD11bhighCXCR5+/CXCR5-) in the brain exhibited better motor function, though with limited differences by injury or sex for other classical ABC subsets. Rare CD11b+CXCR5+ populations from uninjured mice secreted more IFN-γ when exposed to TLR7/9 …

Genetic And Metabolic Factors Shaping Functional And Systemic Recovery Post-Spinal Cord Injury: A Focus On Apoe, Chase Taylor

Theses and Dissertations--Neuroscience

There are currently approximately 300,000 individuals living with a spinal cord injury (SCI) in the United States with an additional 17,000 injuries occurring each year. Perhaps of equal importance the median age at which an SCI occurs within the population has steadily increased since the 1970s to the 2010s from 29 years to 43 years and is still on the rise. Women, historically underrepresented in biomedical research, have also seen a slight increase in SCI incidence. This increase in age of injury onset means that more people with an SCI will be impacted by genetic factors associated with Alzheimer’s disease …

What’S Harm Reduction Got To Do With It? A Study Of The Implementation Of Substance Use Management Practices Among A Sample Of U.S. Domestic Violence Programs, Stephanie H. Ratliff

Theses and Dissertations--Social Work

Domestic violence programs are essential resources for survivors of intimate partner violence (IPV). Programs offer services that go beyond providing safety and shelter. To improve outcomes, program staff have expanded services to meet the needs of survivors. One population of survivors that has gained attention in the peer-reviewed literature is survivors who use substances (SWUS). These survivors have unique needs and are at increased risk of IPV due to substance misuse. Research about the support available to SWUS after they access shelter is scarce. Using cross-sectional data from a national sample of 97 U.S. domestic violence programs, this study describes …

Fathers’ Perspectives On The Role Of Spirituality In Substance Misuse Disorder Treatment And Engaging With Their Children, Kendra Michelle Eubank

Theses and Dissertations--Social Work

The father's role and the extent of involvement with his children have shifted over the past several decades. As a result, researchers have made considerable advances in understanding paternal influences on child development and families. However, one under-researched topic is how fathers' substance misuse, and the recovery process may influence father involvement and effective co-parenting, and specifically, how spirituality plays a role in that. In this qualitative study, fourteen participants participated in semi-structured interviews. The data revealed two main themes: 1) pillars of a spiritual awakening and 2) applying spirituality to healthy fatherhood engagement.

These findings led to four interpretations: …