Digital Commons Network^™

Cardiac Effects Of Obesity During Pregnancy In C57bl/6j Mice, Kayla Lynn Dudick

Theses and Dissertations--Nutrition and Food Systems

Objective: Pregnancy requires profound cardiac and metabolic adaptation. Left ventricular (LV) mass is increased in response to pregnancy, but is not associated with cardiac damage. In contrast, obesity-mediated cardiac hypertrophy is pathological. Data from animal studies indicate dietary fatty acid composition may have a protective effect during states of extreme cardiac physiological adaptation. In contrast, aberrant cardiac metabolism is a hallmark of disease. Over a third of reproductive-age women in the United States are obese, but there is a paucity of data describing the effect of obesity on maternal cardiac adaptation to pregnancy. The objective of this study was to …

Epidemiology Of Colorectal Cancer Comorbidities And Stage At Diagnosis, Survival, And Second Primary Malignancies In Kentucky, 2003-2016, Nikita Leigh Vundi

Theses and Dissertations--Public Health (M.P.H. & Dr.P.H.)

Background: Colorectal cancer (CRC) is the third most common type of cancer and the third most common cause of cancer death among men and women in the United States.^1-3 The American Cancer Society estimates that there will be 147,950 new cases of CRC and 53,200 CRC related deaths in the U.S. for the year 2020.3 Kentucky CRC incidence for 2012-2016 was the highest in the nation, and the mortality rate for years 2013-2017 was ranked 5th in the nation.^4-6 Risk factors for CRC include lifestyle factors, genetics, and disease status (comorbidities and treatment).2, 7 Diabetes has been …

Gynecologic Large Cell Neuroendocrine Carcinoma: A Review, Grant Burkeen, Aman Chauhan, Rohitashva Agrawal, Riva Raiker, Jill M. Kolesar, Lowell B. Anthony, B. Mark Evers, Susanne Arnold

Internal Medicine Faculty Publications

Large cell neuroendocrine carcinomas (LCNEC) are rare, aggressive high-grade neuroendocrine neoplasms within the neuroendocrine cell lineage spectrum. This manuscript provides a detailed review of published literature on LCNEC of gynecological origin. We performed a PubMed search for material available on gynecologic LCNEC. We analyzed 104 unique cases of gynecologic LCNECs, of which 45 were cervical primary, 45 were ovarian, 13 were uterine, and 1 was vaginal. A total of 45 cases of cervical LCNEC were identified with a median age of 36 years. Median overall survival was 16 months. We identified 45 ovarian LCNEC cases in the published literature with …

Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (As A Rapid Method) Coupled With Machine Learning Approaches For Detection And Quantification Of Gluten Contaminations In Grain-Based Foods, Abuchi Godswill Okeke

Theses and Dissertations--Biosystems and Agricultural Engineering

Cross-contamination between food grains during harvesting, transportation, and/or food processing is still a major issue in the food industry. Due to cross-contact with gluten-rich grains (wheat, barley, and rye grains), gluten can get into food that’s naturally free from gluten and thus may not be safe for consumption for people susceptible to gluten-related disorders such as celiac disease, wheat allergy, gluten intolerance or sensitivity. The conventional method of gluten detection is cumbersome, time-consuming, and requires well-trained personnel. Therefore, there is a need for a rapid and equally effective technique to authenticate gluten contamination in foods. This research work explored the …

Characterization And Enzyme Engineering Of Laccases Towards Lignin Valorization In Aqueous Ionic Liquids, Joseph Stevens

Theses and Dissertations--Biosystems and Agricultural Engineering

Lignin is one of the most abundant polymers found in nature, making up 15 – 40% of the weight of terrestrial biomass. Due to the structural and monomeric heterogeneity of lignin, it is recalcitrant thermochemical and biological valorization methods. Converting lignin to value-added products via sustainable and cost-effective pathways will reduce waste and add value to future cellulosic biorefineries. Biological methods for lignin valorization (e.g. lignin degrading enzymes or microbes) is limited by low lignin solubility in biocompatible solvents, resulting in low product yield. Recent reports on biocatalysts for lignin valorization have focused on the lignolytic multicopper oxidase laccase, …

Structural And Lexical Methods For Auditing Biomedical Terminologies, Rashmie Abeysinghe

Theses and Dissertations--Computer Science

Biomedical terminologies serve as knowledge sources for a wide variety of biomedical applications including information extraction and retrieval, data integration and management, and decision support. Quality issues of biomedical terminologies, if not addressed, could affect all downstream applications that use them as knowledge sources. Therefore, Terminology Quality Assurance (TQA) has become an integral part of the terminology management lifecycle. However, identification of potential quality issues is challenging due to the ever-growing size and complexity of biomedical terminologies. It is time-consuming and labor-intensive to manually audit them and hence, automated TQA methods are highly desirable. In this dissertation, systematic and scalable …

Metadata Management For Clinical Data Integration, Ningzhou Zeng

Theses and Dissertations--Computer Science

Clinical data have been continuously collected and growing with the wide adoption of electronic health records (EHR). Clinical data have provided the foundation to facilitate state-of-art researches such as artificial intelligence in medicine. At the same time, it has become a challenge to integrate, access, and explore study-level patient data from large volumes of data from heterogeneous databases. Effective, fine-grained, cross-cohort data exploration, and semantically enabled approaches and systems are needed. To build semantically enabled systems, we need to leverage existing terminology systems and ontologies. Numerous ontologies have been developed recently and they play an important role in semantically enabled …

Deep Neural Architectures For End-To-End Relation Extraction, Tung Tran

Theses and Dissertations--Computer Science

The rapid pace of scientific and technological advancements has led to a meteoric growth in knowledge, as evidenced by a sharp increase in the number of scholarly publications in recent years. PubMed, for example, archives more than 30 million biomedical articles across various domains and covers a wide range of topics including medicine, pharmacy, biology, and healthcare. Social media and digital journalism have similarly experienced their own accelerated growth in the age of big data. Hence, there is a compelling need for ways to organize and distill the vast, fragmented body of information (often unstructured in the form of natural …

Temporal Data Extraction And Query System For Epilepsy Signal Analysis, Yan Huang

Theses and Dissertations--Computer Science

The 2016 Epilepsy Innovation Institute (Ei2) community survey reported that unpredictability is the most challenging aspect of seizure management. Effective and precise detection, prediction, and localization of epileptic seizures is a fundamental computational challenge. Utilizing epilepsy data from multiple epilepsy monitoring units can enhance the quantity and diversity of datasets, which can lead to more robust epilepsy data analysis tools. The contributions of this dissertation are two-fold. One is the implementation of a temporal query for epilepsy data; the other is the machine learning approach for seizure detection, seizure prediction, and seizure localization. The three key components of our temporal …

Bayesian Kinetic Modeling For Tracer-Based Metabolomic Data, Xu Zhang

Theses and Dissertations--Statistics

Kinetic modeling of the time dependence of metabolite concentrations including the unstable isotope labeled species is an important approach to simulate metabolic pathway dynamics. It is also essential for quantitative metabolic flux analysis using tracer data. However, as the metabolic networks are complex including extensive compartmentation and interconnections, the parameter estimation for enzymes that catalyze individual reactions needed for kinetic modeling is challenging. As the pa- rameter space is large and multi-dimensional while kinetic data are comparatively sparse, the estimation procedure (especially the point estimation methods) often en- counters multiple local maximum such that standard maximum likelihood methods may yield …

Statistical Intervals For Various Distributions Based On Different Inference Methods, Yixuan Zou

Theses and Dissertations--Statistics

Statistical intervals (e.g., confidence, prediction, or tolerance) are widely used to quantify uncertainty, but complex settings can create challenges to obtain such intervals that possess the desired properties. My thesis will address diverse data settings and approaches that are shown empirically to have good performance. We first introduce a focused treatment on using a single-layer bootstrap calibration to improve the coverage probabilities of two-sided parametric tolerance intervals for non-normal distributions. We then turn to zero-inflated data, which are commonly found in, among other areas, pharmaceutical and quality control applications. However, the inference problem often becomes difficult in the presence of …

Compositional Modeling: A Classical Imitative Pedagogy For The Modern Era, Robert Harris Jeter

Theses and Dissertations--Music

Students of composition develop two skills simultaneously: craft and creativity. Since students are more naturally inclined to focus on one of these skills over the other, finding the proper balance is an educational challenge. An effective pedagogical system for composition cultivates both of these necessary skills.

Imitation was a preferred pedagogical approach during the Classical period. In his 1848 book School of Practical Composition, Carl Czerny instructs his readers to apply the extensive rules of composition by strictly following a compositional model. Although this methodology lost favor during the nineteenth century, the imitative techniques presented by Czerny are flexible enough …

Passacaglia And Its Related Forms: Before, During, And After 18th Century Baroque And Program Notes, Austin Han

Theses and Dissertations--Music

The purpose of this project is to inform readers of the importance musicology has in informing one’s own learning experience as a performer and listener. As an expression of this exercise, I’ve focused on the history of the passacaglia in Europe from its origins in Spain to its culmination in the music of Paul Hindemith (1895-1963). Through the process of learning about different renditions of passacaglia through musical analysis and comparisons with contemporary art movements and their legacies, I hope the results of what are shown displays an urgent appreciation for applying a more nuanced and openminded approach to the …

Organic Farming And Incidence Rates Of Select Health Outcomes: An Evaluation Of The Usda Certified Organic Program, Aja Croteau

MPA/MPP/MPFM Capstone Projects

Medical studies over the past few decades have shown increasing evidence that exposure to pesticides is associated with numerous health conditions, specifically Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma, leukemia, asthma, and depression. Pesticides are widely used across the United States to ensure an affordable and bountiful food supply, but many of the chemicals used pose notable health risks. Numerous programs exist to measure and monitor pesticide exposure from agriculture, but researchers and public health experts remain uncertain of the efficacy of regulatory programs on reducing the amount of pesticide used and on protecting citizens from exposure. Organic agriculture, which uses significantly fewer pesticides than …

Ictus Or Rebound? The Experience Of Behind-The-Beat Playing In Orchestral Conducting, Sey Ahn

Theses and Dissertations--Music

The origin of playing behind-the-beat is attributed to the Hungarian conductor Arthur Nikisch (1855-1922), who is one of the most important figures in the history of the art of conducting. Nikisch, serving as Music Director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the Berlin Philharmonic, and the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra during a critical moment in the development of orchestral playing, influenced a generation of conductors who followed. Behind-the-beat playing, as many conductors and musicians refer to in describing experiences of top professional orchestral musicians, is a prevailing characteristic of theirs, not often observed in amateur orchestras and their conductors. It is an …

The Impact Of Ryegrass On A Fragipan Soil, Keegan Patrick Smith

Theses and Dissertations--Plant and Soil Sciences

Fragipans are soil horizons which negatively impact row crop yields due to their cemented nature. Annual ryegrass has been proposed as a cover crop to help remediate these dense horizons. The objectives of this study were to (1) evaluate potential ryegrass root exudates and their ability to solubilize proposed fragipan cementing agents, aluminum (Al), iron (Fe), and silica (Si) in stirred-batch reactor studies; and (2) evaluate annual ryegrass’ ability to remediate the fragipan through an 8-week greenhouse growth study using non-destructive, mini-rhizon samplers installed on soil cores for in situ pore water sampling, and non-invasive soil porosity calculations using X-ray …

Extracting Secondary Metabolites From Bacterial Endophytes To Suppress Or Promote Sweet Sorghum And Weeds, Mohammad R. Alsabri

Theses and Dissertations--Plant and Soil Sciences

Endophytic bacteria are ubiquitous in agricultural settings and have the potential to drastically affect plant growth both positively and negatively. These complex relationships play a key role in plant nutrition and are therefore of great interest to the agricultural community and beyond. With my dissertation work, I have had the opportunity to examine the relationship between endophytic bacteria and plants in various ways. The first part of my dissertation investigated how the microbial diversity found in soil affects the below- and above-ground traits of Sorghum bicolor. In the second section, I focused on a particular strain of bacteria that …

Plant-Soil Interactions Dominate Soil Microbial Respiration And Soil Organic Carbon Sequestration In A Subtropical Moist Evergreen Broadleaved Forest In China, Zhijie Yang

Theses and Dissertations--Plant and Soil Sciences

Tropical forest soils contain one-third of global soil carbon (C). The warm and moist climate in tropical forests leads to rapid soil organic carbon (SOC) decomposition, with the highest soil microbial respiration rates in the world, so even a slight change in soil C and microbial respiration could affect atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration. However, there remains a lack of understanding of the mechanisms driving microbial respiration in tropical forests, due to different climate and biophysical drivers compared to temperate or boreal forests. Furthermore, forest conversions (from natural forests to plantations) are most widespread in tropical regions, leading to a loss …

Acute Sensitivity And Tolerance To Alcohol As Predictors Of At-Risk Drinking, Holley Allen

Theses and Dissertations--Psychology

Laboratory studies have reliably shown that reduced sensitivity to alcohol’s subjective intoxicating effect is associated with heavier drinking. More recently, there has been research to suggest that heightened sensitivity to the disinhibiting effects of alcohol might also contribute to at-risk drinking. Most research on the acute effects of alcohol has focused on drinking magnitudes averaged across participants with little attention to how individual differences influence abuse potential. This study overcomes previous limitations by testing the degree to which individual differences in acute sensitivity and tolerance to the subjective intoxicating and disinhibiting effects of alcohol predict drinking behavior in a large …

Modulation Of Epileptogenesis: A Paradigm For The Integration Of Enzyme-Based Microelectrode Arrays And Optogenetics, Corwin R. Butler, Jeffery A. Boychuk, Francois Pomerleau, Ramona Alcala, Peter Huettl, Yi Ai, Johan Jakobsson, Sidney W. Whiteheart, Greg A. Gerhardt, Bret N. Smith, John T. Slevin

Physiology Faculty Publications

BACKGROUND: Genesis of acquired epilepsy includes transformations spanning genetic-to- network-level modifications, disrupting the regional excitatory/inhibitory balance. Methodology concurrently tracking changes at multiple levels is lacking. Here, viral vectors are used to differentially express two opsin proteins in neuronal populations within dentate gyrus (DG) of hippocampus. When activated, these opsins induced excitatory or inhibitory neural output that differentially affected neural networks and epileptogenesis. In vivo measures included behavioral observation coupled to real-time measures of regional glutamate flux using ceramic-based amperometric microelectrode arrays (MEAs).

RESULTS: Using MEA technology, phasic increases of extracellular glutamate were recorded immediately upon application of blue light/488 nm …

Essays On Corporate Finance And Institutional Investors, Ang Li

Theses and Dissertations--Finance and Quantitative Methods

The dissertation consists of three chapters spanning two areas of finance: corporate finance and institutional investors. In the first chapter, “Board Gender Diversity, Firm Culture, and Female Inventors”, I study how employee's Research and Development (R&D) activity is affected by firm culture. Using board gender diversity as a proxy for female-friendly culture, I find that a greater representation of women in the boardroom is associated with increased productivity and innovation output by female inventors relative to male inventors. Female inventors file more highly cited patents and less uncited patents. The effect is driven by female directors with R&D or high-tech …

Improving Retention And Degree Attainment For Underrepresented Students In Stem: Is Experiential Learning The Solution?, Cori Henderson

Theses and Dissertations--Educational Policy Studies and Evaluation

Experiential learning opportunities, such as undergraduate research, are found to be useful in promoting retention and graduation in STEM majors, and specifically for underrepresented student populations. These opportunities are being implemented throughout the United Stated as a means to improve student learning and persistence. In Kentucky’s strategic plan, experiential learning activities are seen as an avenue to help students persist in college and are key components in helping the commonwealth reach their goal of sixty-percent of adult Kentuckians earning a college credential by 2030.

Mirroring the commonwealth’s strategic plan, Northern Kentucky University (NKU) emphasized the importance for experiential learning opportunities …

The University School: The University Of Kentucky's Role In The Laboratory School Movement Of The 20th Century, Shanna M. Patton

Theses and Dissertations--Educational Policy Studies and Evaluation

This study expands the scope of institution-level research on college and university-run laboratory schools to include the University of Kentucky’s on-campus laboratory school that operated from 1918 to 1965. Specifically, it preserves the institutional history of UK’s laboratory school, which has largely disappeared from local memory; provides a specific case study of a laboratory school in a largely unstudied state and region, namely Kentucky and the South; and contextualizes the role and trajectory UK’s laboratory school played in the larger Laboratory School Movement of the 20^th century. Because of UK’s status as a southern land grant university, this research …

Is Secondhand Discrimination Harmful For The Mental Health Of Black Americans? Findings From A Community Epidemiological Study, Myles Moody

Theses and Dissertations--Sociology

In recent years, there has been a growing concern about not only the deleterious health effects of direct experiences of racism, but also how individuals are affected by others’ experiences of racism. It has been firmly established that direct exposure to discrimination can negatively impact the mental health of Black Americans and other minorities. But there is a dearth of empirical evidence that may answer the question of how indirect experiences of racism affects health. The purpose of this study is threefold: 1) to examine the social distribution of personal and vicarious experiences of discrimination among Black adults, 2) to …

It’S Not Just Sunday School: Young Children, Race/Ethnicity, And Gender In Three Homogeneous Protestant Sunday Schools, Henry James Zonio

Theses and Dissertations--Sociology

Current sociological approaches to examining the lives of children approach children as active agents and participants in their socialization. Further, children are considered experts witnesses and interpreters of their own experiences. In the cases of race and gender socialization, interpretive reproduction has been used as a framework to examine how children construct and act on meanings of race and gender. While these interpretive studies illuminate how children interpret and reproduce meanings of race and gender, they do not explicate how children appropriate meanings from their cultural milieu. Consequently, these studies do not consider ways the larger culture enables and constrains …

Inhibition Of Fusarium Oxysporum F. Sp. Nicotianae Growth By Phenylpropanoid Pathway Intermediates, Timothy E. Shull, Jasmina Kurepa, Robert D. Miller, Natalia Martinez-Ochoa, Jan A. Smalle

Plant and Soil Sciences Faculty Publications

Fusarium wilt in tobacco caused by the fungus Fusarium oxysporum f. sp. nicotianae is a disease‑management challenge worldwide, as there are few effective and environmentally benign chemical agents for its control. This challenge results in substantial losses in both the quality and yield of tobacco products. Based on an in vitro analysis of the effects of different phenylpropanoid intermediates, we found that the early intermediates trans‑cinnamic acid and para‑coumaric acid effectively inhibit the mycelial growth of F. oxysporum f. sp. nicotianae strain FW316F, whereas the downstream intermediates quercetin and caffeic acid exhibit no fungicidal properties. Therefore, our in …

Pneumovirus Infections: Understanding Rsv And Hmpv Entry, Replication, And Spread, Jonathan T. Kinder

Theses and Dissertations--Molecular and Cellular Biochemistry

Pneumoviruses including human metapneumovirus (HMPV) and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) are significant causes of respiratory tract infections globally. Children, elderly, and immunocompromised patients are at the greatest risk for developing severe infections, which can have devastating outcomes. Although these viruses are ubiquitous with significant impacts on human health, there are no antivirals or vaccines available. The only FDA approved therapy is a monoclonal antibody for RSV, given prophylactically during the infectious season, and this treatment is only available for high risk infants. The work presented in this thesis aims to increase our understanding of how these viruses enter, replicate, and …

Siah-Mediated Ups Regulation Of The Development Of The Visual System In Zebrafish (Danio Rerio), Warlen Pereira Piedade

Theses and Dissertations--Biology

The eye is a complex organ responsible for vision that which formation depends on several intricate developmental steps. Vision for humans is responsible for the majority of its sensory interactions with the environment. Eye development can be divided into two critical stages: morphogenesis, which establishes the eye structure culminating with the fusion of the optic fissure, a transient cleft important for eye vascularization, and subsequently specification and differentiation of the retina to form every type of retinal neuronal cell, including photoreceptors, rods and cones. Developmental failure in either of these critical stages can lead to inherited congenital or age-related blinding …

The Oncogenic Role Of The Protein Tyrosine Phosphatase 4a3 (Ptp4a3 Or Prl-3) In T-Cell Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia, Min Wei

Theses and Dissertations--Molecular and Cellular Biochemistry

T-cell Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia (T-ALL) is an aggressive blood cancer. There are no immunotherapies and few molecularly targeted therapeutics available for the treatment of this malignancy. The identification and characterization of genes and pathways that drive T-ALL progression is critical for the development of new therapies for T-ALL. The protein tyrosine phosphatase PTP4A3, also known as PRL-3, has been extensively reported to play a causative role in numerous cancers, including several types of blood malignancies. However, its role in T-ALL is not well defined.

Here, we determined that the PRL-3 plays a critical role in T-ALL initiation and progression by …

Epigenetic Implications In Inorganic Arsenic-Mediated Carcinogenesis, Meredith Eckstein

Theses and Dissertations--Molecular and Cellular Biochemistry

Chronic, low dose exposure to inorganic arsenic (iAs) is a public health concern throughout the world, contributing to the development of many diseases, including lung cancer. Several mechanisms for iAs-mediated carcinogenesis have been proposed, of which the production of reactive oxygen species and formation of chromosomal aberrations are the most studied. Another equally important, yet less studied mechanism is dysregulation of epigenetic marks. “Epigenetics” refers to changes that occur on the DNA and chromatin that do not alter base pair identity, but alter compaction, expression, and regulation of specific DNA sequences. There are several types of epigenetic marks including histone …