Digital Commons Network^™

Roles Of Mitochondrial Chchd2 And Gpcr-Associated Β-Arrestin2 In The Pathogenesis Of Lewy Body Disorders, Teresa R. Kee

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Coiled-coil-helix-coiled-coil-helix domain containing 2 (CHCHD2) is a mitochondrial protein that plays important roles in cristae structure, oxidative phosphorylation, and apoptosis. Multiple mutations in CHCHD2 have been associated with Lewy body disorders (LBDs), such as Parkinson’s disease (PD) and dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB), with the CHCHD2T61I mutation being the most widely studied. We generated the first transgenic mouse models expressing human CHCHD2WT and the PD-linked CHCHD2T61I mutation driven by the mPrP promoter. CHCHD2T61I Tg, but not CHCHD2WT Tg mice exhibit perinuclear mitochondrial aggregates, neuroinflammation, and have impaired long-term synaptic plasticity associated with synaptic dysfunction. Dopaminergic neurodegeneration, a hallmark of PD, …

Resolving Antarctic Margin Paleoceanography For Two Different Timescales And Archives, Theresa M. King

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Recent decades have seen increased rates of ice mass loss from Antarctic ice sheets, through thinning of many ice shelves around the periphery of the continent. The most vulnerable are the glacial systems that are marine-terminating and grounded below sea level, a characteristic that exposes these systems to sea level rise and warming oceans. Enhanced basal melting under the influence of warm ocean water masses can lead to thinning and retreat of glaciers, and ultimately to the acceleration of grounded ice loss. To contextualize current ice mass loss and contribute to accurate model projections for future retreat scenarios, it is …

Attempted Predation Of A Cuban Treefrog (Osteopilus Septentrionalis) By A Florida Scrub-Jay (Aphelocoma Coerulescens), James Rogers, Karl E. Miller, Steve Johnson

Florida Field Naturalist

No abstract provided.

Minute Black Scavenger Flies (Diptera: Scatopsidae) Taken From Birds On Vaca Key, Florida, Lawrence J. Hribar, Herón Huerta

Florida Field Naturalist

No abstract provided.

Connectivity Of Atlantic And Gulf Of Mexico Waterbird Populations, Sarah Dudek, W. Andrew Cox, Raya Pruner

Florida Field Naturalist

No abstract provided.

Functional Studies Of Dcaf14 In Replication Fork Stability And Genome Integrity, Neysha Tirado-Class

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The response to replication stress is critical for ensuring the stability of replication forks and preserving genome integrity. To aid this response, several factors are recruited to stalled replication forks to prevent irreversible collapse of the replication machinery. Replication fork proteomic analyses of stalled forks reveal enrichment of DCAF14, a component of the Cullin4-RING (CRL4) E3 ubiquitin ligase complex, that mediates replication fork protection by blocking nuclease-mediated digestion of nascent DNA. However, little is known about the molecular mechanism by which DCAF14 functions in the context of replication stress. Notably, loss of function mutations in DCAF14 are associated with a …

Exploring Spin Dynamics Using Time-Resolved Magneto-Optic Kerr Effect Spectroscopy, Arup Barua

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The interaction between light and matter plays a crucial role in numerous systems, including optoelectronicdevices such as Photodiode (PD), Laser diode (LD), LED, solar cells to even biological components like photosystem II, and potential upcoming quantum technologies. Light is absorbed or emitted usually at a scale smaller than a nanometer, with associated processes happening within attosecond to picosecond durations. It is known that in a vacuum, static magnetic fields do not affect light. On the other hand, the magnetic field or magnetization of a material affects the light that passes through or is reflected by the material. The magneto-optic effect …

Group B Streptococcus Intestinal Barrier Disruption And The Protective Role Of Butyrate, Kristen Dominguez

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Group B Streptococcus (Streptococcus agalactiae; GBS) is a leading cause of neonatal sepsis worldwide. Intrapartum antibiotics in GBS-colonized mothers significantly reduced the incidence of early-onset sepsis occurring in the first week of life; however, there are currently no prophylactic interventions for late-onset sepsis, occurring within the first 3 months of life. GBS is a pathobiont that primarily colonizes the gastrointestinal tract and can cross the intestinal barrier via both the paracellular and transcellular routes, causing invasive disease. Neonatal susceptibility to GBS intestinal translocation is mediated by inadequate epithelial barrier function and microbiome immaturity; however, the mechanisms by which GBS exploits …

From Graph Theory For Robust Deep Networks To Graph Learning For Multimodal Cancer Analysis, Asim Waqas

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation explores the intersection of graph theory and deep learning, focusing on enhancing the robustness of deep neural networks (DNNs) and applying these advancements to complex problems like cancer diagnosis and treatment. We investigate the structural properties of graphs and their influence on neural network performance, particularly in multimodal learning. The work delves into the design space of DNN architectures using graph-theoretic measures, transforming graphs into DNN architectures for various tasks, and examining their robustness against noise and adversarial attacks. The study extends to medical imaging, highlighting advanced DNN architectures like U-Net for brain tumor segmentation. It addresses the …

Adipose Derived Stem Cell Exosomes And Uses Thereof, Denise R. Cooper, Lisa Gould, Niketa Patel, Mack Wu

USF Patents

Provided herein are exosomal compositions and exsosomal lncRNA compositions and formulations thereof. Also provided herein are methods of treating a wound in a subject in need thereof that can contain the step of administering an exosomal composition and/or exsosomal lncRNA compositions or formulation thereof to a wound in a subject in need thereof.

Porphyrin Overdrive In Cancer: Unraveling The Mechanisms And Therapeutic Potential, Pravin D. Meshram

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The increased understanding of cancer cell metabolism has shown options for novel treatment strategies. This thesis looks at the role of heme metabolism, specifically "porphyrin overdrive," in cancer progression and treatment. Cancer cells are hypermetabolic and rely on heme synthesis. When treated with δ-aminolevulinic acid (ALA), they abnormally accumulate heme intermediates. This metabolic weakness presents an opportunity to exploit heme synthesis in targeted cancer therapy. In this study, we suggest a "Bait and Kill" technique that uses exogenous ALA to induce protoporphyrin IX (PpIX) buildup in cancer cells, making them more susceptible to oxidative stress. We investigate the possibility of …

Gender Role Depictions In Arabic Children’S Picture Books, Aljawharah A. Almuqbil

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study aimed to explore gender role depictions in children's Arabic picture books. The importance of this study emerged from its focus on young children, where the concept of gender begins to be constructed. This study provided insight into the nature of gender roles in children’s picture books, especially under the remarkable changes that Saudi society is witnessing and the lack of Arab studies in this area. Social cognitive theory, gender schema theory, and critical literacy pedagogy guided the study. A sample of 26 picture books was selected from the Child Book Club at King Abdulaziz Public Library and analyzed …

Modeling Pelagic Feeding In The Gulf Of Mexico With Implications For Ecosystem-Based Fisheries Management, Rebecca L. Scott

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The focus of this dissertation was simulating trophic dynamics in the pelagic Gulf of Mexico (GOM) with an emphasis on ecosystem-based fishery management (EBFM) strategies for large pelagic species. Fisheries management in the United States largely utilizes single-species assessments, although managers are increasingly interested in EBFM approaches to better account for ecosystem effects on stocks such as predator/prey dynamics. Production in the surface layer of the pelagic zone is variable with environmental conditions and prey is often concentrated in patches by hydrodynamic features. Production is also transported vertically via diel vertical migration, during which deep-sea species provide potentially key forage …

Mathematical Modeling Of Tumor Response Dynamics To Predict Progression-Free Survival In Patients With Recurrent High-Grade Glioma, Daniel James Glazar

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In this dissertation, I aim to develop a mathematical model describing tumor volume response dynamics to perform individual dynamic predictions of progression-free survival (PFS) on patients with recurrent high-grade glioma (rHGG).

Patients with rHGG have a dismal prognosis with median overall survival (OS) of <12 months and median PFS of <7 months. However, there is a wide heterogeneity in treatment responses. Therefore, to aid clinicians with making decisions to alter therapeutic protocol, I would like to predict patient-specific PFS.

To perform individual dynamic predictions, I employ the Claret tumor growth inhibition (TGI) model. I further develop this model by coupling it with two different survival models. Inter-patient heterogeneity is also taken into account through mixed effects, including covariate effects. Model PFS predictions were evaluated using receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve analysis as well as Brier …

Black Holes In Time: The Effect Of Grid Radiation On The Tumor Immune Microenvironment, Rebecca A. Bekker

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Tumor-immune interactions shape a developing tumor and its tumor immune microenvironment (TIME) resulting in either well-infiltrated, immunologically inflamed ‘hot’ tumor beds, or ‘cold’ immune deserts with low levels of infiltration. The pre-treatment immune state of the TIME is associated with treatment outcome; immunologically hot tumors generally exhibit better responses to radio- and immunotherapy than cold tumors. However, radiotherapy is known to induce opposing immunological consequences, resulting in both immunostimulatory and inhibitory responses. In fact, it is thought that the radiation induced tumoricidal immune response is curtailed by subsequent applications of radiation. Thus, I hypothesize that spatially fractionated radiotherapy (SFRT), administered …

‘The Overheated World’: Crisis Politics And Neoliberal Inertia, Shomik Chakrabarti

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

At the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, policymakers were forced to balance the maintenance of ongoing economic activity alongside the measures advised by epidemiologists and other public health officials to contain the viral spread. The magnitude of the pandemic forced major conduits of the global economy to come to a sudden halt through incidents such as border closures, supply chain disruptions, lockdowns and calls for individuals to distance themselves from one another. Like the 2008 Global Financial Crisis, COVID-19 was thought to signal an inflection point for neoliberal political economy where a possible post-neoliberal era would develop in the aftermath …

Modeling The Development Of Borderline Personality Disorder: A Formal Theory Approach, Alexandria M. Choate

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Borderline personality disorder (BPD) is a complex disorder characterized by instabilities in emotion regulation, impulse control, and interpersonal relationships. BPD affects adolescent and adult populations at similar rates, with traits often detectable in late childhood or early adolescence. Despite some progress in the understanding of BPD and its development, contemporary theories have yet to address several important questions in the literature. The present study suggests that many limitations associated with current theoretical models of BPD may be attributable to an overdependence on verbally specified, or weak theories. In most cases, weak theories are constructed using vague or imprecisely defined hypotheses …

Anonymized Identity Recognition And Classification Using Privacy Preserving Facial Encoding, Manas Sanjay Pakalapati

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The need for sharing large-scale datasets to train deep neural network models, particularly in healthcare, raises significant data security and privacy concerns. To address these issues, methods such as data encryption or encoding are utilized. These techniques can encrypt the data and make it unreadable to humans, while still retaining its usefulness for training models.

In this study, we investigate various image encoding techniques designed to protect privacy by making images unrecognizable while still retaining their usefulness for model training. Our investigation utilized publicly available facial databases and focused on evaluating the trade-offs inherent in image encoding techniques, with a …

Comparing The Genomes Of Multidrug And Vancomycin-Resistant Enterococcus Faecium From A Florida Wastewater Treatment Plant, Eleanor Brodrick

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Vancomycin-resistant Enterococcus (VRE) are a serious health threat, causing 50,000 infections and 5,000 deaths each year in the United States (CDC, 2019). Multidrug-resistant VRE are becoming more prevalent, and treatment options for infections caused by these organisms are limited (Arias et al., 2010; CDC, 2019). Multidrug resistant VRE have been previously isolated from wastewater in Brazil, Canada, and Portugal (Araújo et al., 2010; de_Farias et al., 2022; Sanderson et al., 2019). Thirteen vancomycin-resistant Enterococcus faecium isolated from three stages of a Florida wastewater treatment plant were fully resistant to the following antibiotics: vancomycin, ampicillin, ciprofloxacin, erythromycin, tetracycline, and nitrofurantoin, and …

Immunogenicity Of A Plasmodium Vivax Circumsporozoite Protein Vaccine, Eric Cruz Murphy

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Malaria is a disease of global public health importance. Improving treatment methods focus on novel antimalarial drugs to combat parasite resistance and the development of vaccines with effective adjuvants. The current vaccine RTS,S/AS01 is moderately effective only against Plasmodium falciparum. There is no vaccine for Plasmodium vivax to date. The development and implementation of a vaccine against P. vivax would inhibit sporozoite infection of hepatocytes, block development into the blood stage and confer future immune protection. The circumsporozoite protein (CSP) is the most abundant on the surface of sporozoites and protein variants VK210 and VK247 are leading vaccine candidates for …

A Comparison Of Video Feedback And Video Self-Evaluation To Improve Tap Skills, Ellie Warmund

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Within the research on behavioral interventions in sports, researchers have evaluated various feedback-based interventions to enhance performance of skills. Research has demonstrated the effectiveness of video feedback (VF) to improve performance across a variety of sports. Video self-evaluation (VSE), though less studied, is another feedback-based intervention that has been proven to improve sports skills. By using a multiple baseline across participants with an embedded alternating treatments design, this study compared VF to VSE to improve the performance of tap skills. We evaluated three skills for each dancer; one skill received VF, one received VSE, and one did not receive an …

Cues And Identity: Assessing Substance Use Cues, Life Experience, And Context, Katelynn Carlsen

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This project employs Ecological Momentary Assessment (EMA) methods alongside semi-structured interviews to examine substance use cues, or “triggers”, in the everyday context. This includes repeated assessment of participants’ behaviors and thoughts over time. EMA allows researchers to sample phenomena the moment they occur within the context. These methods are most used in psychology and clinical science. Current research on substance use relies on lab-based assessments to understand cues and their relationship to consumption (Carter and Tiffany 1999, Conklin and Tiffany 2003, Witteman et al. 2015). This analysis uses data collected by the Cues in the Everyday (CITED) Team. The CITED …

Patrol Car Swab Sampling For Biological Agents, Haylie Corcho

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Law enforcement personnel have a variety of responsibilities and subsequently, a variety of different exposures. Biological agents are common in the environment and therefore, these exposures are a concern in the profession. There is a gap in research into biological agent exposures in this profession, particularly how it relates to surface contamination and within the officers’ vehicles. There is also a lack of standardized decontamination procedures for patrol vehicles, allowing for the potential persistence of these agents. The purpose of this study is to understand which biological agents are most common in patrol cars, which areas within the vehicles have …

An Analysis Of (Hu)Manid Using The Usf Donated Skeletal Collection: Estimating Sex And Ancestry For Edentulous Individuals, Natalie S. Wise

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The Human Mandible Identification program, (hu)MANid©, enables anthropologists to estimate the sex and ancestry of unidentified skeletal remains from metric and morphoscopic variables from the mandible. The program is suitable for a variety of anthropological contexts, including forensic casework and bioarchaeological or paleoanthropological analyses. The purpose of this research project is to test the accuracy and applicability of the (hu)MANid program on edentulous mandibles. While the authors of (hu)MANid warn against data collection for edentulous mandibles, there are many circumstances in applied forensic casework where the unidentified person is edentulous. Edentulous individuals experience alveolar resorption, which is the loss of …

Maturing Out Of Crime: A Test Of The Integrated Maturation Theory Of Desistance, Kelly E. Kortright

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation partially tested a newer integrated theory, the Integrated Maturation Theory (IMT) of desistance. IMT argues that as maturation increases across five maturation domains (social role, civic, identity, psychosocial, and neurocognitive) the likelihood of offending decreases. Using a sample of serious justice-involved juveniles spanning ages 14-24 from the Pathways to Desistance Study, the individual and simultaneous maturation domain development of the social role, civic, identity, and psychosocial maturation domains, were explored for heterogeneity. Using a group-based trajectory modeling approach, including multi-trajectory modeling, this study advanced the understanding of maturation development by identifying sub-groups following declining trajectories of maturation and …

Cornus Officinalis Extract Activates The Keap1/Nrf2 Pathway And Delays T1d Onset In The Nod Mouse, Justin D. Fletcher

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Type 1 diabetes (T1D) is an autoimmune disorder that results in the destruction of the insulin producing pancreatic β cells. The only therapeutic option following T1D clinical onset is exogenous insulin supplementation. At present, there is no cure for T1D and attempted interventional therapy has been focused on modulating the immune system. Few attempts have been pursued at preserving β cell function and survival. Here we provide a novel approach using extract from the fruit of the Cornus officinalis (CO) tree to preserve β cell function through the prevention of β cell stress. CO has been used in traditional Chinese …

Methods For Detecting And Treating Propranolol Sensitive Tumors, Hana Totary-Jain

USF Patents

The present disclosure relates to methods for detecting and treating propranolol sensitive tumors.

The Relationship Between Rejection Sensitivity And Higher Order Cognitive Functions, Rachel Gaynor

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Rejection sensitivity indexes individual differences in the expectation of, reaction to, and interpretation of possible rejection. Research on mechanisms underlying these individual differences have identified a reduction in top-down emotion regulatory processes in those exhibiting heightened rejection sensitivity. Most of these studies utilize rejection-specific affective stimuli. This study examined the relationship between rejection sensitivity score, calculated from the 18-question RSQ, and the recruitment of higher level inhibition resources, as indexed by the conflict N2, on three novel Flanker tasks. In order to further examine previously identified patterns in affective inhibition across differing levels of rejection sensitivity, and to determine whether …

Investigation Of Self-Assembly Of Hen Egg White Lysozyme Fibrils, Nabila Bushra

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Amyloid proteins are a large group of proteins that tend to aggregate and form insoluble fibrils with a characteristic cross-β sheet structure. Intriguingly, this process of “amyloid formation” has been simultaneously linked to devastating human diseases called amyloidoses, ranging from Alzheimer’s Disease, cardiac amyloidoses to type II diabetes, as well as functional biological responses such as hormone storage and sperm quality control. Amyloid fibrils have also attracted significant attention for their unique mechanical, chemical, and optical characteristics, establishing them as promising tough biomaterials. The urgent need to find treatments for Alzheimer’s disease, and the demand for safe and renewable biomaterials …

Use Of Nanoparticle Additives To Achieve Desirable Properties In Fluorine-Free Firefighting Foams, Annelise Kathleen Curtin

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Class B Firefighting foams play a crucial role in protecting equipment and people fromliquid fuel fires but concerns regarding the impacts of per- and poly-fluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) have resulted in bans on the use of aqueous film forming foam (AFFF). Fluorine-free replacements are yet to achieve the same level of performance. Nanoparticles including silica and clay have been used to improve foam stability, especially in environments where hydrocarbon fuels are present. These materials have also been used in solid composites to improve fire resistance. The stability of aqueous foams containing silica and Laponite RD nanoparticles along with surfactants of different …