Digital Commons Network^™

Ripple Effects Of The Belo Monte Dam: A Syndemic Approach To Addressing Health Impacts For The Downstream Community Of Gurupá, Cynthia A. Pace

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examines the public health impacts of a large dam project on a downstream community using the framework of Syndemic Theory. The particular focus is the Belo Monte Dam, located in the Brazilian Amazon, and its impact on the community of Gurupá, Pará. At the present time the Belo Monte Dam, which is nearing completion, stands out in scale as being the world’s third largest dam complex. Gurupá is a community well known (and well-studied) in the social science literature as Amazon Town. The aims of this study are to assess the pre-existing public health of Gurupá, as well …

Evaluating Beach Water Quality And Dengue Fever Risk Factors By Satellite Remote Sensing And Artificial Neural Networks, Abdiel Elias Laureano-Rosario

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Climatic variations, together with large-scale environmental forces and human development affect the quality of coastal recreational waters, creating potential risks to human health. These environmental forces, including increased temperature and precipitation, often promote specific vector-borne diseases in the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico. Human activities affect water quality through discharges from urban areas, including nutrient and other pollutants derived from wastewater systems. Both water quality of recreational beaches and vector-borne diseases can be better managed by understanding their relationship with local environmental forces.

I evaluated how changes in vector-borne diseases and poor recreational water quality were related to specific environmental …

Ay 2017/2018 Sec Meeting Materials, 2018-06-06, Faculty Senate

Faculty Senate Archives

No abstract provided.

Cold Genocide: Falun Gong In China, Maria Cheung, Torsten Trey, David Matas, Richard An

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

The article explores patterns of a cold genocide in the eradication campaign against Falun Gong. Falun Gong is a spiritual practice that has been targeted for eradication by the Chinese regime since 1999. In comparison to the documented cases of genocide, the genocide of Falun Gong stands out as anomalous because it is virtually ignored. The article seeks to elucidate the multi-faceted nature of this concealed genocide from an interdisciplinary perspective encompassing social work, medicine and law, In particular, the article demonstrates that the eradication campaign against Falun Gong is distinguishable as a cold genocide as it is: (1) multi-dimensional …

Physical And Social Systems Resilience Assessment And Optimization, Daniel Romero Rodriguez

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Resilience has been measured using qualitative and quantitative metrics in engineering,economics, psychology, business, ecology, among others. This dissertation proposes a resilience metric that explicitly incorporates the intensity of the disruptive event to provide a more accurate estimation of system resilience. A comparative analysis between the proposed metric and average performance resilience metrics for linear and nonlinear loss and recovery functions suggests that the new metric enables a more objective assessment of resilience for disruptions with different intensities. Moreover, the proposed metric is independent of a control time parameter. This provides a more consistent resilience estimation for a given system and …

Studies Aimed At The Synthesis Of Anti-Infective Agents, Ankush Kanwar

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Infectious diseases continue to be a major concern worldwide. They are the second leading cause of death after heart disease. Factors such as an increasing global population, travel, urbanization, global climate change and evolution of pathogens have made infectious diseases more common. Infectious diseases, particularly neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) result in many deaths worldwide. Malaria and leishmaniasis are two common (NTDs) which affect low income countries around the globe. Low cost drugs with novel mechanism of action are required to tackle the growing resistances of parasites against current drugs used in the developing world, where most of the cases occur. …

Identification Of Novel Hits Against, Ala A. Azhari

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Leishmaniasis is a disease caused by obligate intracellular parasites of the genus Leishmania, including 20 species that are pathogenic to humans. Female sand fly is the known vector that can transmit the disease. Visceral leishmaniasis is the severe form of the disease that affects internal organs and can be fatal with inappropriate diagnosis or treatment. Leishmania donovani is the causative agent of visceral leishmaniasis. Approximately 350 million in 89 countries are at risk of infection. Around 2 million new cases are reported annually with 500,000 of these are visceral leishmaniasis. Current drug therapies are inadequate due to their toxicity, high …

Moonmilk As A Human And Veterinary Medicine: Evidence Of Past Artisan Mining In Caves Of The Austrian Alps, Christoph Spötl

International Journal of Speleology

The use of moonmilk for medical and other purposes in the Alps is documented since the 16^th century. This article reviews speleological reports and sparse historical accounts about the extraction of moonmilk from 18 caves in the Eastern Alps of Austria in an artisan mining style. One such example from a cave in Tyrol is documented in detail, where moonmilk was mined until the beginning of the 20^th century and which, due to its remote location, uniquely preserved traces of both the mining and processing style.

Seeing Trauma: The Known And The Hidden In Nineteenth-Century Literature, Alisa M. Deborde

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Trauma as an official diagnosis first entered the DSM in 1980 and literary theorists began employing the term to discuss literature not too long after. Since the 1990s, theorists have largely focused on twentieth-century trauma literature with Holocaust and Modernist texts garnering much of the critical interest. Yet, Victorian life was also marked by trauma-causing events. From railway catastrophes, to industrial accidents, to premature deaths, and infectious diseases, Victorians reckoned with wounds to the mind through their lived experience. Trauma scholars who do work with nineteenth-century texts, with few exceptions, consider trauma in terms of its modern theories. While the …

From Florida To Antarctica: Dereplication Strategies And Chemical Investigations Of Marine Organisms, Matthew A. Knestrick

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In the fight against disease and illness, nature has provided mankind some of our best therapeutics in the form of secondary metabolites. The plant, fungi and animal phyla inhabiting the Earth produce diverse and unique chemistry that can be used in our fight against disease. In the growing threat of drug resistance and pathogen evolution, the field of natural products chemistry strives to explore new biological and chemical diversity sources, and develop innovative methodology to identify and isolate new chemistry faster than ever.

The dissertation herein presented is one such effort to find new, bioactive chemistry from the marine environments. …

A Multivariate Approach For An Improved Assessment Of Pre-Erythrocytic Stage Therapies Targeting Plasmodium Vivax And Plasmodium Falciparum, Alison E. Roth

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The malaria pre-erythrocytic stages have been identified as an ideal therapeutic target, but complex in vitro models for Plasmodium vivax and Plasmodium falciparum lack the efficiency needed for rapid screening and evaluation of new vaccines and drugs, especially targeting the P. vivax hypnozoite. To address this challenge, we employed a multi-parameter approach using “omics’” to identify pre-erythrocytic targets and biomarkers, guide phenotypic therapeutic screening, and study parasite functionality with innovative bioassays using highcontent screening. Herein, we discuss three novel bioassays formatted in 384-well plate systems with utilization of commercially-available materials and application of high-content imaging for rapid bio-image analysis. To …

Synthesis Of Novel Agents For The Treatment Of Infectious And Neurodegenerative Diseases, Benjamin Joe Eduful

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Infectious and neurodegenerative diseases continue to be a major concern worldwide. In spite of the great advances in drug therapy for treating various infectious and neurodegenerative diseases, there is still an urgent need for new and improved drugs due to increasing drug resistance among pathogens, emergence of new pathogens, ease of transmission of infections, ineffective available treatments, toxicity associated with current standard of care, aging populations and the lack of better alternative treatment options.

The first part of this manuscript (chapters 1 - 5) describes the synthesis of novel agents active against Leishmania donovani. According to the World Health Organization …

Using Multi‐Response Models To Investigate Pathogen Coinfections Across Scales: Insights From Emerging Diseases Of Amphibians, William E. Stutz, Andrew R. Blaustein, Cheryl J. Briggs, Jason T. Hoverman, Jason R. Rohr, Pieter T. J. Johnson

Integrative Biology Faculty and Staff Publications

1. Associations among parasites affect many aspects of host–parasite dynamics, but a lack of analytical tools has limited investigations of parasite correlations in observational data that are often nested across spatial and biological scales.
2. Here we illustrate how hierarchical, multiresponse modelling can characterize parasite associations by allowing for hierarchical structuring, offering estimates of uncertainty and incorporating correlational model structures. After introducing the general approach, we apply this framework to investigate coinfections among four amphibian parasites (the trematodes Ribeiroia ondatrae and Echinostoma spp., the chytrid fungus Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis and ranaviruses) and among >2,000 individual hosts, 90 study sites and five amphibian host …

Bridging The Under-Five Mortality Gap For Africa In The Era Of Sustainable Development Goals: An Ordinary Least Squares (Ols) Analysis, Michael Acheampong, Chukwudi Ejiofor, Abraham A. Salinas-Miranda, Foday M. Jaward, Michael K. Eduful, Qiuyan Yu

School of Geosciences Faculty and Staff Publications

Background: While Africa achieved significant progress in reducing under-five mortality rate (U5MR) in the MDGs era, it did not achieve the set target and still has the highest average of 81 deaths per 1000 live births compared to a global average of 43 deaths. The SDG number 3 has set a new target of reducing U5MR to 25 deaths per 1000 births in the world, which serves a huge challenge, especially for Africa. Socioeconomic inequities that remain unaddressed across countries account for Africa’s high U5MR. Unless there is adequate prioritization of important socioeconomic, healthcare, and environmental factors, the new SDGs …

Design, Synthesis, Application Of Biodegradable Polymers, Mussie Gide

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Bacterial infections have posed a serious threat to the public health due to the significant rise of the infections caused by antibiotic-resistant bacteria. There has been considerable interest in the development of antimicrobial agents which mimic the natural HDPs, and among them biodegradable polymers are newly discovered drug candidates with ease of synthesis and low manufacture cost compared to synthetic host defense peptides. Herein, we present the synthesis of biocompatible and biodegradable polymers including polycarbonate polymers, unimolecular micelle hyperbranched polymers and dendrimers that mimic the antibacterial mechanism of HDPs by compromising bacterial cell membranes. The developed amphiphilic polycarbonates are highly …

Reduction In Needlestick Injuries Using A Novel Package Of Interventions, Kamal Thakor Patel

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In 2015 Dr. Pratiksha Vaghela started the “Stop Poking Me” campaign which was aimed at curbing the increase in the number of needlesticks at the James A. Haley Veteran Affairs Hospital (JAHVA). The data for needlesticks was collected by the Occupational Medicine Clinic (OMC) between Oct 2013 and Oct 2016. We then obtained the original data from Dr. Vaghela’s project and compared the data to assess whether the new implementations have truly decreased the number of needlesticks. There was a 23.6% reduction in the number of needlesticks between 2013 and 2016 and even more importantly a 60.1% reduction between 2015 …

A Synopsis Of The Civil Rights Struggle In Tampa And The Role Of The Tampa Branch Of The National Association For The Advancement Of Colored People, Robert W. Saunders

Sunland Tribune

No abstract provided.

Flames And Frogs – The Impact Of Environmental Disturbances On Host-Parasite Dynamics, Nicole Ortega

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The successful completion of this work is dedicated first to my grandparents for having always shown their unwavering love and encouragement in my journeys (most of which they kindly and politely only pretended to understand) and for having also served as life-long role models who upheld an unparalleled work ethic. To many whom I consider to be my chosen family, especially Ann Williams and Brittany Sears, who kept me laughing, but more importantly, kept my crazy train from derailing during these tumultuous years. To Wayne Price and Tom Jackman, who fostered the success of my career and are the epitome …

Effectiveness Of Biocide Substitution And Management Plan Implementation For The Control Of, Adelmarie Bones

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

After the notorious outbreak and discovery of Legionella bacteria in 1976, the waterborne pathogen was added to the list of disease-causing agents associated with the built environment. Legionella pneumophila was discovered when it was identified as the agent that caused 34 deaths and an outbreak of pneumonia-like symptoms in several attendees of the 1976 American Legion Convention held in Philadelphia (OSHA, 2017).

Recently published data from the year 2015 reported more than 6,000 Legionnaires’ cases identified in the United States (CDC, 2016). This is a concerning number given that one in every ten infected persons will die of the disease. …

Phosphorylation Of Ire1 At S729 Regulates Ridd In B Cells And Antibody Production After Immunization, Chih-Hang A. Tang, Shiun Chang, Adrienne W. Paton, James C. Paton, Dmitry I. Gabrilovich, Hidde L. Ploegh, Juan R. Del Valle, Chih-Chi A. Hu

Chemistry Faculty Publications

To relieve endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress, IRE1 splices XBP1 messenger RNA (mRNA) or engages regulated IRE1-dependent decay (RIDD) of other mRNAs. Upon XBP1 deficiency, IRE1 switches to perform RIDD. We examined IRE1 in XBP1-deficient B cells and discovered that IRE1 undergoes phosphorylation at S729. We generated an anti–phospho-S729 antibody to investigate such phosphorylation. Compared with pharmacological ER stress inducers or Toll-like receptor ligands, the bacterial subtilase cytotoxin has an unusual capability in causing rapid and strong phosphorylation at S729 and triggering B cells to express spliced XBP1. To assess the function of S729 in IRE1, we generated S729A knock-in mice …

Do Host‐Associated Gut Microbiota Mediate The Effect Of An Herbicide On Disease Risk In Frogs?, Sarah A. Knutie, Caitlin R. Gabor, Kevin D. Kohl, Jason R. Rohr

Integrative Biology Faculty and Staff Publications

1. Environmental stressors, such as pollutants, can increase disease risk in wildlife. For example, the herbicide atrazine affects host defences (e.g. resistance and tolerance) of the amphibian chytrid fungus Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd), but the mechanisms for these associations are not entirely clear. Given that pollutants can alter the gut microbiota of hosts, which in turn can affect their health and immune systems, one potential mechanism by which pollutants could increase infection risk is by influencing host‐associated microbiota.
2. Here, we test whether early‐life exposure to the estimated environmental concentration (EEC; 200 μg/L) of atrazine affects the gut bacterial composition of …

Angiostrongylus Cantonensis: Epidemiologic Review, Location-Specific Habitat Modelling, And Surveillance In Hillsborough County, Florida, U.S.A., Brad Christian Perich

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Angiostrongylus cantonensis is a parasitic nematode endemic to tropical and subtropical regions and is the leading cause of human eosinophilic meningitis. The parasite is commonly known as rat lungworm because the primary host in its lifecycle is the rat. A clinical overview of rat lungworm infection is presented, followed by a literature review of rat lungworm epidemiology, risk factors, and surveillance projects. Data collected from previous snail surveys in Florida was considered alongside elevation, population per square kilometer, median household income by zip code territory, and normalized difference vegetation index specific to the geographic coordinates from which the snail samples …

Differences In Voc-Metabolite Profiles Of Pseudogymnoascus Destructans And Related Fungi By Electronic-Nose / Gc Analyses Of Headspace Volatiles Derived From Axenic Cultures, Alphus Dan Wilson, Lisa Beth Forse

KIP Articles

The most important disease affecting hibernating bats in North America is White-nose syndrome (WNS), caused by the psychrophilic fungal dermatophyte Pseudogymnoascus destructans. The identification of dermatophytic fungi, present on the skins of cave-dwelling bat species, is necessary to distinguish between pathogenic (disease-causing) microbes from those that are innocuous. This distinction is an important step for the early detection and identification of microbial pathogens on bat skin prior to the initiation of disease and symptom development, for the discrimination between specific microbial species interacting on the skins of hibernating bats, and for early indications of potential WNS-disease development based on inoculum …

Crow's Nest, February 26, 2018, Crow's Nest Staff

Crow's Nest

The February 26, 2018, issue of the Crow's Nest.

Longitudinal Study Of Age-Specific Pattern Of Coronavirus Infection In Lyle’S Flying Fox (Pteropus Lylei) In Thailand, Supaporn Wacharapluesadee, Prateep Duengkae, Aingorn Chaiyes

KIP Articles

Bats are natural reservoirs for several highly pathogenic and novel viruses including coronaviruses (CoVs) (mainly Alphacoronavirus and Betacoronavirus). Lyle’s flying fox (Pteropus lylei)‘s roosts and foraging sites are usually in the proximity to humans and animals. Knowledge about age-specific pattern of CoV infection in P. lylei, prevalence, and viral shedding at roosts and foraging sites may have an impact on infection-age-structure model to control CoV outbreak. P. lylei bats were captured monthly during January–December 2012 for detection of CoV at three areas in Chonburi province; two human dwellings, S1 and S2, where few fruit trees were located with an open …

Agrochemicals Increase Risk Of Human Schistosomiasis By Supporting Higher Densities Of Intermediate Hosts, Neal T. Halstead, Christopher M. Hoover, Arathi Arakala, David J. Civitello, Guilio A. De Leo, Manoj Gambhir, Steve A. Johnson, Nicolas Jouanard, Kristin A. Loerns, Karena Nguyen, Jason R. Rohr

Integrative Biology Faculty and Staff Publications

Schistosomiasis is a snail-borne parasitic disease that ranks among the most important water-based diseases of humans in developing countries. Increased prevalence and spread of human schistosomiasis to non-endemic areas has been consistently linked with water resource management related to agricultural expansion. However, the role of agrochemical pollution in human schistosome transmission remains unexplored, despite strong evidence of agrochemicals increasing snail-borne diseases of wildlife and a projected 2- to 5-fold increase in global agrochemical use by 2050. Using a field mesocosm experiment, we show that environmentally relevant concentrations of fertilizer, a herbicide, and an insecticide, individually and as mixtures, increase densities …

Cutr Connections [February 2018], Cutr

CUTR Newsletters

No abstract provided.

Use Of 'Eradication' In Hiv Cure-Related Research: A Public Health Debate, Karine Dubé, Stuart Luter, Breanne Lesnar, Luke Newton, Jerome T. Galea, Brandon Brown, Sarah Gianella

Social Work Faculty Publications

Background: The landscape of Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) research has changed drastically over the past three decades. With the remarkable success of antiretroviral treatment (ART) in decreasing AIDS-related mortality, some researchers have shifted their HIV research focus from treatment to cure research. The HIV cure research community often uses the term eradication to describe the science, and talks about eradicating the virus from the body. In public discourse, the term eradication could be conflated with disease eradication at the population level. In this paper, we call for a reframing of HIV cure research as control, as it is a …

Categorizing Security For Security Management And Information Resource Management, Yejun Wu, Fansong Meng

Journal of Strategic Security

There are various definitions and dimensions of security, and there is no comprehensive taxonomy of security. The existing classifications of security are fragmented, scattered, and divergent, binging challenges in the management of security and the management of information resources about security. This research aims to study the problems of security categorization in existing knowledge organization systems, and to develop a comprehensive taxonomy of security. Through thematic analysis of the literature about security, we found that, despite the various definitions and dimensions of security, there is a common feature of security. That is, security is expressed in this pattern: subject wants …

Novel Role Of Histone Deacetylase 11 (Hdac11) In Regulating Normal And Malignant Hematopoiesis, Jie Chen

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

During hematopoiesis, multilineage progenitor cells and the precursors are committed to individual hematopoietic lineages. In normal myelopoiesis, the immature myeloid cells (IMCs) differentiate into macrophages, neutrophils or dendritic cells. However, under tumor burden, these IMCs differentiate into myeloid derived suppressor cells (MDSCs) result in an up-regulation of immune suppressive factors and pro-tumor effect. The development of normal or malignant is tightly controlled by endogenous signals such as transcription factors and epigenetic regulations. HDAC11 is the newest identified members of the histone deacetylase (HDAC) family. Previous study in our group had identified HDAC11 as a negative regulator of interleukin 10 (IL-10) …