Digital Commons Network^™

Demographics Of Those In Clinical Trials To Treat S. Aureus, William Pelletiers

Public Health Theses

This study aims to identify potential discrepancies between the racial/ethnic demographics of participants enrolled in randomized controlled trials of antibacterials used to treat Staphylococcus aureus and the demographics for those who contract the disease. 115 clinical trials were analyzed for gender, racial, and ethnicity of clinical trial participants. Of the included studies, 95.7% included data on gender, 71.3% included racial data, and 27.0% included ethnicity data. Black/African American individuals were substantially underrepresented in trials when compared to the burden of disease that they share. Black/African American representation in S. aureus clinical trials needs to be ensured in order to properly …

The Behavioral Immune System: A Public Health Perspective: How Our Partisan Perceptions Of Sickness Influenced Population Health During The Pandemic, Senyte Pierce

Public Health Theses

Researchers propose that people have a disease-avoidance mechanism called thebehavioral immune system, which is intended to identify and prevent possible interactions with harmful infections. This thesis is intended to explain this phenomenon, one well researched in the fields of behavioral and evolutionary psychology, to public health professionals, who can use its hypothesized components to understand better how to support population health and wellbeing. In addition, the COVID-19 pandemic will serve as a case study to understand the limitations of the BIS as it relates to socio-cultural events and personal political identification. The behavioral immune system keeps individuals healthy by monitoring …

Xylazine In The Drug Supply: Emerging Threat In Connecticut And Lessons Learned From Philadelphia, Thomas A.G. Quijano

Public Health Theses

Background: Xylazine, a sedative analgesic drug approved as an animal tranquilizer but not for human use, has become an adulterant in the supply of heroin/fentanyl.(Greene & Thurmon, 1988) Between 2019 and 2020, prevalence of xylazine in overdose death reports increased by 44.8% nationally.(Friedman et al., 2021) The three jurisdictions in 2020 with the highest prevalence of xylazine were Philadelphia (25.8%), Maryland (19.3%), and Connecticut (10.2%).(Friedman et al., 2021) Not much is known about how xylazine’s impacts on service provider’s practices and the people they serve.

Objectives: Use a multiple methods approach to understand xylazine’s presence and impact in Connecticut, and …

Evaluating Associations Between Pesticide Use And Kidney Function In The Biomarkers Of Exposure And Effect In Agriculture (Beea) Study: Using Cluster Models To Group Farmers With Similar Pesticide Use, Thomas Shao

Public Health Theses

Pesticides are commonly used in agrarian areas to control for certain forms of undesirable plant or animal life. The widespread use of pesticides and the variety of chemicals that make up this class pose adverse health effects to those exposed to pesticides. Farmers often use multiple pesticides, and their use is often correlated with other pesticides. However, analyses typically examine each pesticide individually and mixture analysis is not as heavily considered. To further evaluate the exposure of pesticide usage, hierarchical clustering methods were used to identify similar questionnaire response patterns. This technique has been used to quantify homogenous exposure estimates …

Using A Dynamic Model To Assess Maintenance Of Deer Tick Virus Via Horizontal Transmission In Ixodes Scapularis Populations, Hannah Jane Sproch

Public Health Theses

IntroductionDeer Tick Virus—a lineage of Powassan Virus—is an emerging tick-borne flavivirus associated with high rates of morbidity and mortality. Although DTV infection is rare, there has been an observed increase in the number of human cases in recent decades, necessitating more public health attention. Ixodes scapularis ticks are known to be the primary vector of DTV. However, the enzootic cycle has yet to be fully characterized and there is evidence that horizontal transmission alone may be insufficient for DTV maintenance; it is hypothesized that vertical and co-feeding transmission are also necessary for sustained transmission.

MethodsA dynamic model was developed to …

Nutrition And Hookworm Infection: A Causal Analysis Of The Literature, Mengting Su

Public Health Theses

Hookworm infection is one of the neglected tropical diseases, particularly in low and middle-income countries, but we know relatively little about causal evidence related to malnutrition. This is mainly due to the relatively small research community compared to those investigating the impact of hookworm infection on host nutritional status and disease complications. Causal inference is critical in epidemiology and biomedical research because it can be a powerful tool in enlightening prevention efforts and developing etiology models. The application of causal criteria to address complex epidemiological research questions is indeed helpful in proposing more interventions to improve the health and well-being …

“Being Teased Is Almost A Guarantee”: Development And Validation Of The Stress And Weight Stigma Scale (Straws), Julia Michelle Winschel

Public Health Theses

Objective: To validate The Stress and Weight Stigma Scale (STRAWS), a measure developed to assess prolonged activation and anticipatory stress related to experiences of weight stigma among individuals with overweight and obesity. Methods: Based on an existing instrument for prolonged activation and anticipatory race-related stress, the 17-item STRAWS was developed to capture perseverative cognition, secondary appraisal, and anticipatory stress in response to a specific experience of weight stigma. Participants with a range of body mass indices (BMI; kg/m2) and who believed they had experienced weight stigma were recruited using Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (n = 301). We used confirmatory factor analysis …

Musculoskeletal Outcomes Among Older Adults Following Hospitalization For Covid-19: A Pilot Study, Clara Ming Hei Wong

Public Health Theses

Background Older individuals are at high risk for musculoskeletal impairment following hospitalization due to decreased neuromuscular function and bone mineral density (BMD) arising from illness itself, and external factors such as immobilization and changes in nutritional status. To address the knowledge gap regarding the longitudinal impact of COVID-19 on musculoskeletal outcomes, this thesis aimed to study the relationship between COVID-19 severity and physical functional, incidence of falls and fractures in older adults. Secondarily, in a subset of patients we examined the relationship between COVID-19 severity and osteoporosis- and sarcopenia-related measures. Methods This study analyzed data from the VALIANT study and …

Operationalizing The Unesco Universal Declaration On Bioethics And Human Rights Through A Trans-Cultural Lens: A Qualitative Study With Students In South Korea And The United States, Francis Yang

Public Health Theses

The UNESCO Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights (UDBHR) was a well-intentioned but controversial document. Some scholars appreciated UNESCO’s attempts at providing an internationally recognized set of ethical guidelines. Other critics maintained the UDBHR, in particular Article 12, was yet another representation of Western ideological hegemony and an ill-informed attempt at embracing universality at the expense of diversity. This paper acknowledged this debate but approaches the UDBHR in trans-cultural manner, framing the UDBHR not as an imposing guideline, but as a seed around which dialogue can coalesce. Such dialogue might engage similarities, differences, and nuances between different ethical perspectives, …

Quantitative Real-Time Pcr Assays For The Detection Of Leptospira, Alice Zhao

Public Health Theses

Leptospirosis is an infectious zoonotic disease caused by bacteria of the genus Leptospira. The genus is comprised of 40 pathogenic species divided among P1 (19) and P2 (21). Leptospirosis incurs a disproportionately large burden of disease in urban slum regions of developing countries that lack adequate sewage disposal, water treatment, and sanitation infrastructure. While P1 species have been identified in cases of human infection, it is unclear if all Leptospira species are capable of infecting humans, especially P2 species. Among P1 species, L. interrogans has been described as the most frequent specie to cause disease in both animals and humans, …

Per- And Polyfluoroalkyl Substances (Pfass) In Household Dust From North China: Occurrence, Contribution, And Human Exposure, Yakun Zhou

Public Health Theses

Measurements and analysis of an emerging contaminant of poly- and perfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) and adverse health effects associated with PFAS have received increasing attention around the world. In this study, 64 participants’ household dust were collected in Jinan, China during September 2018 and January 2019, conducted as part of the Biomarkers of Air Pollutants Exposure in the Chinese aged 60-69 (China BAPE) study. Concentrations and composition profiles of 7 individual PFASs were determined and estimated daily intakes of PFASs via dust ingestion for children and adults were calculated. By using a dimension reduction method − principal component analysis (PCA) and …

Residential And Race/Ethnicity Disparities In Heat Vulnerability In The United States, Mitchell Manware

Public Health Theses

Adverse health outcomes caused by extreme heat represent the most direct human health threat associated with the warming of the Earth’s climate. Socioeconomic, demographic, health, land cover, and temperature determinants contribute to heat vulnerability; however, nationwide patterns of residential and race/ethnicity disparities in heat vulnerability in the United States are poorly understood. This study aimed to develop a Heat Vulnerability Index (HVI) for the United States; to assess differences in heat vulnerability across geographies that have experienced historical and/or contemporary forms of marginalization; and to quantify HVI by race/ethnicity. Principal components analysis (PCA) was used to calculate census tract level …

Coresets For Time Series Clustering, Lingxiao Huang, K. Sudhir, Nisheeth Vishnoi

Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers

We study the problem of constructing coresets for clustering problems with time series data. This problem has gained importance across many fields including biology, medicine, and economics due to the proliferation of sensors for real-time measurement and rapid drop in storage costs. In particular, we consider the setting where the time series data on N entities is generated from a Gaussian mixture model with autocorrelations over k clusters in R^d. Our main contribution is an algorithm to construct coresets for the maximum likelihood objective for this mixture model. Our algorithm is efficient, and, under a mild assumption on …

Tissue-Specific H2bub1 Is Required For Cardiomyocyte Development, Syndi Marissa Barish

Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations

Currently, the most common birth defect is congenital heart disease (CHD). Whole-exome sequencing of CHD patients identified variants affecting chromatin modifier genes, which contribute to 2.3% of CHD. De-novo mutations affecting the core complex (RNF20, RNF40 and UBE2B) required for the monoubiquitination of H2B on K120 (H2Bub1) are enriched in CHD patients. This complex has many cellular roles, such as stem cell differentiation, but no described role in cardiac morphogenesis. This body of work describes the role of H2Bub1 in heart development in vivo in mice and in vitro in human induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC)-derived cardiomyocytes. The patient variant …

The Role Of Post-Translational Modifications In The Fate Of Nascent Tail-Anchored Membrane Proteins, Jacob Andrew Culver

Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations

Membrane proteins contain hydrophobic transmembrane domains (TMDs) which reside in the nonpolar section of cellular membranes. The synthesis of the majority of membrane proteins in eukaryotes is routed through the co-translational insertion pathway. As they are translating nascent membrane proteins, ribosomes are delivered to the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) where the new membrane protein is co-translationally inserted directly into the membrane as it emerges from the ribosome exit tunnel. Thus, newly translated hydrophobic TMDs are never released into the aqueous cytosol. However, exceptions to the co-translational insertion route exist. Certain membrane proteins are released into the cytosol and must be captured …

Nitrogen Cycle Chemistry With Metal-Pincer Complexes Relevant To Electrochemical Nitrogen Fixation, Gannon Patrick Connor

Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations

The large-scale industrial fixation of N2 to NH3 through the Haber-Bosch process has cemented itself as the primary means to provide N for fertilizer and commodity chemicals globally. However, our dependence on this process is unsustainable in the long term due to its reliance on fossil fuels to generate H2 and to provide the substantial energy input for the reaction, paired with high infrastructure requirements that necessitate centralized synthesis plants and sophisticated transportation networks. As an alternative, electrochemical fixation of N2, coupling water oxidation to provide proton (H+) and electron (e–) equivalents with the N2 reduction reaction (NRR) to achieve …

Determination And Application Of Hydrogen Transfer Thermochemistry: Studies Of Molecules, Nanoparticles, And Metallic Electrodes, Rishi Agarwal

Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations

From the surface of a platinized electrode in a hydrogen fuel cell to the oxygen-evolving complex in photosystem II, the binding and transfer of hydrogen is central to many important chemical transformations in our world. The core thermochemical and kinetic concepts which connect these proton-coupled electron transfers across a continuum of compound sizes, including small molecules, nanoparticles, and bulk materials, are explored. In Chapter 1, an introduction to the thermochemical basis for this thesis is presented, along with the underlying connections it enables for studying hydrogen transfer across thermochemical and electrochemical reactions, as well as gas and solution phase reactivity.Methods …

Integrative Computational Methodologies On Single Cell Datasets, Wenxuan Deng

Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations

High throughput single cell sequencing has seen exciting developments in recent years. With its high resolution characterization of genetics, genomics, proteomics, and epigenomics features, single cell data offer more insights on the underlying biological processes than those from bulk sequencing data. The most well developed single cell technologies are single cell RNA-seq (scRNA-seq) on transcriptomics and flow cytometry on proteomics. Many multi-omics single cell sequencing platforms have also emerged recently, such as CITE-seq, which profiles both epitope and transcriptome simultaneously. But some well known limitations of single cell data, such as batch variations, shallow sequencing depth, and sparsity also present …

Computational Principles Of Multiple-Task Learning In Humans And Artificial Neural Networks, Daniel Benjamin Ehrlich

Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations

While humans can learn to perform many specific and highly specialized behaviors,perhaps what is most unique about human cognitive capabilities is their capacity to generalize, to share information across contexts and adapt to the myriad problems that can arise in complex environments. While it is possible to imagine agents who learn to deal with each challenge they experience separately, humans instead integrate new situations into the framework of the tasks they have experienced in their life, allowing them to reuse insight and strategies across them. Yet the precise forms of shared representations across tasks, as well as computational principles for …

Mechanisms Of Pierce's Disease Resistance In Grapevine (Vitis Vinifera L.): From Xylem Structure To Whole Plant Function, Ana Clara Fanton

Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations

Xylella fastidiosa (Xf) is a xylem-dwelling bacterium that causes Pierce’s disease (PD) in grapevines (Vitis vinifera L.), and disease in a range of other ecologically and economically important woody plants. To successfully colonize the xylem network, Xf cells accumulate on the vessel walls and form a biofilm. The biofilm contains cell wall-degrading enzymes, allowing the bacteria to breach the intervessel pit membranes. Thus, Xf can move from one vessel to another and colonize the xylem network. Degraded intervessel pit membranes and the production of tyloses in response to the presence of Xf likely contribute to significant declines in both hydraulic …

Mapping A Functional Cancer Genome Atlas, Ryan Dz-Wei Chow

Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations

Over the past decade, tremendous resources have been devoted to sequencing the genomes of patient cancers. But while the molecular portraits of cancer are now in higher resolution than ever before, it has remained challenging to derive clinically actionable insights from these data. A central issue is that tumor genome sequencing often can only tell us what mutations are present, not which ones are functionally important. Towards this end, I sought to build an improved toolkit for functional cancer genomics, with the overarching goal of creating experimental platforms that are practical, scalable, and flexible. In collaboration with several colleagues, I …

Relational Morality, Brian D. Earp

Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations

Contemporary work in moral psychology has focused on judgments concerning interactions between strangers. However, it increasingly is recognized that much of human moral judgment takes place in the context of -- and is shaped by -- multiple more familiar social relationships, such as parent-child, teacher-student, close friends, long-term romantic partners, neighbors, teammates, and so on. In this dissertation, I show how such relationships are associated with distinctive patterns of socially prescribed cooperative functions (such as care, hierarchy, or mating), which can be used to predict out-of-sample moral judgments of both blame and praise regarding various actions in relational context. I …

The Organismal And Evolutionary Determinants Of Siphonophore Predation, Alejandro Damian Serrano

Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations

The open-ocean midwater is the largest habitat for animal life on Earth, and one of the most homogeneous environments in space and time. However, these waters harbor complex food webs involving predatory animals from manifold phyla, presenting unique adaptations to capturing the scarce prey resources. These conditions create a natural laboratory, with minimal abiotic disturbances, where interspecific interactions such as predation play a major role in shaping community dynamics and the evolution of form and function. Siphonophores play a central role in midwater food webs feeding across multiple trophic levels on different prey phyla (i.e. jellyfish, crustaceans, worms, fishes). Like …

Statistical Methods For Identifying Genetic Risk Factors Of Lung Diseases, Ming Chen

Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations

Great efforts have been made to understand the mechanism of complex diseases. Besides studying environmental factors and lifestyles, it is imperative to find disease causal genes. With the development of sequencing technology and the rapid accumulation of diverse types of high-throughput biological data, a promising direction to identify disease genes is through data integration. Genes affect diseases through different biological activities. Integrating different biological data can improve the power of gene discovery and the understanding of pathogenic mechanisms. In recent years, a great number of omics databases have become available. Methods for multi-omics data integration have successfully improved the statistical …

The Dna Mismatch Repair Pathway Affects Atr Activation Upon Temozolomide Treatment In Glioblastoma Multiforme, Sachita Ganesa

Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations

In many solid tumors, methylation status of the O6-methylguanine methyltransferase (MGMT) gene promoter is a prognostic biomarker for treatment with the alkylator, temozolomide (TMZ). In the absence of promoter methylation, the MGMT enzyme removes O6-methylguanine (O6-meG) lesions. However, in the setting of MGMT-promoter methylation (MGMT-), the O6-meG lesion activates the mismatch repair (MMR) pathway which functions to remove the damage. Our group previously reported that MGMT- promoter methylation affects activation of the ataxia telangiectasia and RAD3 related protein (ATR) in response to TMZ treatment. Whether or not MMR proteins are involved in ATR activation in the context of MGMT-promoter methylation …

From Eyes To Minds: Perceiving Perception, And Attending To Attention, Clara Colombatto

Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations

The most important visual stimuli that we encounter in everyday life may be other people, and in particular their eyes. We constantly monitor (and follow) where others are looking, and hundreds of studies have stressed the importance of eyes as uniquely powerful visual stimuli. This dissertation argues otherwise: The eyes are special only insofar as they signal deeper properties about the minds behind them—namely the nature and direction of others’ attention and intentions. We empirically support this view in two ways: First, in studies of ‘minds without eyes’, we demonstrate how well-known gaze effects (such as prioritized processing of eye …

Expanding The Reliable Paleomagnetic Constraints On Configurations Of Pre-Pangean Supercontinents, Zheng Gong

Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations

Supercontinents embody perhaps the longest cyclic process on our planet, profoundly influencing the evolution of Earth’s biosphere, geosphere, and atmosphere on timescales of hundred-million years or more. Yet, the configurations of pre-Pangean supercontinents, Rodinia, Nuna, and/or Kenorland, as well as their transition processes remain the subjects of debate, hampering the understanding of the interactions between the global tectonics and Earth’s evolution in deep time. Compared to other approaches, paleomagnetism is the only quantitative method to reconstruct pre-Pangean supercontinents in an absolute paleogeographic framework. However, a recent summary of global paleomagnetic data of Precambrian age reveals two problems. First is that …

New Roles For Small Noncoding Rnas In Germline Development: Maternal Piwi And Pirnas Specifically Protect The Fertility Of Female Progeny, Lauren Gonzalez

Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations

The long-term survival of a species depends on the integrity of its genetic material and the inheritance of that genetic material across generations. In sexually-reproducing organisms, these processes are carried out by the germline: the tissue that produces eggs in females or sperm in males. PIWI proteins and their associated small noncoding piRNAs have been well-characterized for their roles in protecting genome integrity in the germline and promoting the self-renewal of germline stem cells, which support the continual production of eggs or sperm. In Drosophila, maternally-expressed PIWI proteins and piRNAs are also enriched in the germ plasm, the posterior region …

Rise Of The Modern Mediatrix: The Feminization Of Media And Mediating Labor, 1865-1945, Leana Hirschfeld-Kroen

Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations

This dissertation uncovers a vast archive of fictional female telegraph, telephone, and typewriter girls, combining rigorous historical research with feminist, psychoanalytic readings of mass cultural texts to show how the global gendering of low-level communication work shaped modern media. It begins in the United States, where women first performed this work, and explores three further national contexts (France, Germany, and Britain) where female operators and typists circulated as media icons of techno-social connection in an increasingly atomized age. The title “modern mediatrix” describes the essential mediating role white-collar woman workers have played in modern media infrastructure, from switchboard to editing …

Risk Reduction Regarding Stigmatized And Marginalized Communities, Navin Kumar

Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations

While there are several perspectives on marginalization, there are multiple marginalized individuals, social groups, and communities globally. This process of marginalization produces individuals, groups and communities which are refused complete privileges, rights, and power within the broader political and social framework. Social, cultural, biological, and economic factors can thus be used as yardsticks to marginalize individuals and communities. Marginalization can be based on gender, race and ethnicity, social class, and sexuality, among others. Clearly, marginalized communities face poorer health outcomes and these outcomes are sometimes linked to risky behaviors more prevalent in such demographics. Marginalization is associated with reduced health …