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Trpv1 Mrna Is Differentially Expressed In Different Vertebral Levels Of Rat Dorsal Root Ganglia Following Sciatic Nerve Injury, Bree Zeyzus Johns

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Transient Receptor Potential Vanilloid 1 plays an important role in the pain pathway. TRPV1 is expressed in primary afferent nociceptors and acts as a transducer for noxious stimuli; including capsaicin, toxins and noxious heat. TRPV1 protein expression increases in inflammatory and neuropathic pain models, but transcriptional regulation of TRPV1 remains unclear. In the present study, TRPV1 mRNA levels were measured in Dorsal Root Ganglia pertaining to the third, fourth and fifth vertebral levels of the lumbar spine following chronic constriction injury of the sciatic nerve in rats. TRPV1 mRNA levels are shown to increase in lumbar dorsal root ganglia in …

Factors Affecting Predation Of Marine Turtle Eggs By Raccoons And Ghost Crabs On Canaveral National Seashore, Fl, Justin Brown

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Changes in abundance of interactive species can have cascading, community-wide effects (Soule et al. 2003). Raccoons (Procyon lotor) prey on a competitor for marine turtle eggs, the Atlantic ghost crab (Ocypode quadrata). Conservation of marine turtles often includes managing raccoons-the most obvious egg predator-which may have broader ecological effects, and unknown effects on egg predation. Neither the relationship between raccoons and ghost crab density nor the effects of ghost crab density on egg predation are well understood. I studied raccoon-ghost crab interactions and the effects of environmental variation on their activity during the 2007 marine turtle nesting season on Canaveral …

An Historical Inquiry Into Thomas Jefferson's Influence On The American Educational System, Tory Lynn Richey

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to take a deeper look at the influence of an important American historical figure, Thomas Jefferson, on the institution of the American Educational System. Thomas Jefferson was involved in many decisions involving the traditions, practices and institutions of many educational establishments of his time period. His writings have had a lasting influence on our society and the world. His words have been incorporated into many different countries' constitutions across the world. It was important to study decisions of the past in order to understand how to make well-educated decisions in the future. Thomas Jefferson's …

Analysis And Treatment Of Emerging Polar Contaminants, Daniel E. Connors

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Two major classes of polar compounds have recently become a major focus as sources of contamination of water systems. Pharmaceuticals and personal care products (PPCPs) enter water through wastewater streams, and many of these compounds survive current wastewater treatment processes. High production volume chemicals (HPVCs), defined as chemicals produced in excess of one million pounds per year have numerous entries into surface and drinking waters due to their ubiquity. The commonality between many of these compounds is their polarity, which makes them water-soluble.

While both PPCPs and HPVCs have been entering into the environment for decades, advances in analyte detection …

The Evolution Of Opioid/Orphanin Receptors In Chordates, Jazalle Deshaun Mcclendon

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The interest in the opioid/orphanin gene family stems from functional similarities that these peptides have to the narcotic opium. Opiates have been extensively studied because of their analgesic properties; however, the reason that these plant products can affect the human central nervous system was a mystery until the discovery of opiate-like peptides. The endogenous opioid peptides are well understood today because they have been fully cloned and characterized in several different organisms including lower chordates. On the other hand, the opioid/orphanin receptors have not been fully cloned or characterized in lower chordates; therefore, to better understand the past and present …

Amino Acid Residues Implicated In The Interaction Of Melanocortin Ligands And Their Receptors: A Study Of Mc2r Selectivity, Kristopher D. Veo

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Melanocortin receptor ligand selectivity has been a question not easily answered. The inability to functionally express melanocortin 2 receptor (MC2R) has inhibited the study of why MC2R is only stimulated by ACTH, a melanocortin hormone. With the recent discovery of the MC2R accessory protein (MRAP), creating a heterologous system is now feasible. Using a general cell line like CHO-K1 cells, which do not express endogenous MCRs, we were able to create a heterologous expression system and test the selectivity of MC2R using analog variants of ACTH(1-24). Our results indicate an amino acid requirement in the C-terminal portion of ACTH(1-24) for …

Understanding Masculinity: The Role Of Father-Son Interaction, Clyde J. Remmo

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Although a significant amount of research has accounted for gender from a social constructionist perspective, research specifically examining the construction of masculinity is still a relatively new endeavor. Additionally, although gender is accounted for in various family communication theories, no theory specifically accounts for gender formation within the context of family interaction. The purpose of this study is to examine sons' narratives of their recollections of father-son interactions. Studying the father-son dyad in this way may help us to better understand how men constitute masculinity in particular familial relationships. Although the purpose was to examine the themes of father-son interactions, …

Soil Amino Acids At Upper Tree Line, Montane And Lower Tree Line, Kelly C. Owens

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The classic view of the nitrogen cycle in soils is for plants to take up inorganic N in solution for N nutrition. More recent studies reveal plants can take up low molecular weight dissolved organic N such as amino acids directly from the soil. In ecosystems where the rate of microbial mineralization is limited, plants may take up 10 to 200 percent more amino acid N than mineral N. It is not known if plants take up amino acids in all ecosystems, however recent research shows that plants generally take up amino acids when they are present in high quantities …

Heterogeneous Drive Mechanisms For Novel Locomotion In Rough Terrain, Roy Godzdanker

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The smaller the robot the easier it is for it to access voids in a collapsed structure, however small size brings a host of other problems related to constrained resources. One of the primary constraints on small robots is limited motive power to surmount obstacles and navigate rough terrain. This thesis examines the addition of bulk motive force actuators to existing locomotion platforms and the impact of these heterogeneous actuators on conventional steering methods. The steering methods examined are those associated with skid steered vehicles and differential drive vehicles. In developing the Crabinator, a robot composed of a limbed crawler …

Chinese Eyes On The Prize: Strategic Partnerships And Changing Priorities, Elizabeth O'Grady

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The overall theme of this paper is increasing knowledge of the evolution of Chinese priorities and strategy since the Korean War, and how the evolution of China's relationships reveals changes in priorities. Why were these partnerships entered into on the part of China? What was China's strategic thinking? How do strengths and weaknesses in these partnerships reflect China's changing priorities? To attempt to answer these questions, three case studies are used to reveal and analyze changes: Sino- North Korean relations since the Korean War, Sino-Russian relations after the end of the Cold War, and Chinese participation (relations with member states) …

Image Processing Of Oct Glaucoma Images And Information Theory Analysis, Shuting Wang

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Glaucoma is a group of optic nerve disease with progressive structural changes leading to loss of visual function. A careful examination and detection of changes in the optic nerve is the key to early diagnosis of glaucoma. Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT) is one of the known techniques of diagnosis of glaucoma. The patients' eyes are scanned and sub-surface images are captured from optical nerves. Captured OCT images usually suffer from noise and therefore image enhancement techniques can help doctors in better analysis of OCT images and diagnosis of glaucoma. In this thesis, we propose three successful algorithms for enhancing the …

Gene X Environment Interactions In Developmental Dyslexia, Lauren M. Mcgrath

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The goal of this project was to advance understanding of the complex multifactorial etiology of developmental dyslexia, or reading disability (RD), by investigating gene x environment (G x E) interactions. This project tested for G x E interactions using molecular genetic methods and measures of psychosocial and bioenvironmental risk factors. There are two competing predictions that can be derived from existing G x E models about the expected direction of interactions in RD. There could be "diathesis-stress" interactions in which the effects of genotype are stronger in risk environments, or there could be "bioecological" interactions in which the effects of …

Struggling, Coping, And Thriving: Sense-Making In Stepfamily Couples' Narratives About Coparenting, Andrea L. Smith Sisk

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The term coparenting implies a bioparental dyad that often excludes the stepparent's role in sharing parenting across joint-custody households. Focusing solely on this dyad also precludes gaining an understanding of how stepfamily couples manage together the communication and sharing of parental responsibilities with the parent(s) in the shared children's other home. In a departure from this bioparental dyad-focused approach, this study locates the stepfamily couple at the center of an inquiry into managing coparenting across households. This mixed methods design study included in-depth interviews of 32 stepfamily couples whose narratives about coparenting were analyzed using grounded theory methods. Forty-one percent …

Factors Affecting Breeding Territory Size And Placement Of The Florida Grasshoper Sparrow (Ammodramus Savannarum Floridanus), Jill Aldredge

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

For most taxa, maximizing fitness depends on maintaining access to adequate resources. Territories provide exclusive use of resources for an individual or a family group, thus facilitating successful reproduction. The economic defensibility of a territory depends on the quality, abundance, and distribution of its resources as well as the amount of competition that an individual must endure to maintain exclusive access. The benefits of defense must outweigh the costs for territoriality to be profitable. Territory owners may benefit from territories with high quality resources, but they also may incur greater costs defending these resources from competitors. In contrast, territories with …

Post Treatment Alternatives For Stabilizing Desalinated Water, Susaye Douglas

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The use of brackish water and seawater desalination for augmenting potable water supplies has focused primarily on pre-treatment, process optimization, energy efficiency, and concentrate management. Much less has been documented regarding the impact of post-treatment requirements with respect to distribution system. The goals of this study were to review current literature on post-treatment of permeate water, use survey questionnaires to gather information on post-treatment water quality characteristics, gather operation information, review general capital and maintenance cost, and identify appropriate "lessons learned" with regards to post-treatment from water purveyors participating in the Project. A workshop was organized where experts from across …

Evaluation Of Pilo Substrate Specificity Using Normally Non-Glycosylated Proteins In Pseudomonas Aeruginosa, Matthew A. Henkel

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

P. aeruginosa 1244 (PA1244) possesses an O-linked glycosylation system by which the glycosyltransferase, PilO, transfers a single preassembled O-antigen repeating unit to the C-terminal serine residue of pilin as a posttranslational modification. Previous work has shown that the group II pilin of PA103 can be engineered for glycosylation by extending a C-terminal serine away from the surface with a short stretch of alanine residues (Horzempa et al., 2006a). As an extension of that study, several normally non-glycosylated proteins [PA683 pilin, PA1244 PilA-E. coli (EC) alkaline phosphatase (PhoA) fusion, and EC PhoA] were engineered with C-terminal amino acid extensions and assessed …

Design Of Sea Water Heat Exchanger For Miniature Vapor Compression Cycle, James Hughes

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Recent advances in the development of miniature vapor compression cycle components have created unique opportunities for heating and cooling applications, specifically to human physiological requirements that arise in extreme environments. Diving in very cold water between 1.7 and 5°C requires active heating because passive thermal insulation has proven inadequate for long durations. To maintain diver mobility and cognitive performance, it is desirable to provide 250 to 300 W of heat from an untethered power source. The use of a miniature vapor compression cycle reduces the amount of power (batteries or fuel cell) that the diver must carry by 2.5 times …

An Investigation Into Hotel Employees' Perception Of Green Practices, Sun-Hwa Kim

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study examined how employees of the hotel industry perceived green practices. Data was collected from 220 employees working in eight green certified hotels in Orlando. Research results revealed that performance levels of green practices implemented by hotels were lower than the importance levels of those same green practices as perceived by hotel employees. The results of the study illustrated that (1) the employees' perception regarding green practices was not different than one of hoteliers in terms of importance and performance, and (2) employees weighted the green practices that were beneficial to them as more important than green practices that …

Roses Are Red, Violets Are Bluehow Poetry In Science Can Help Students Learn Something New, Kimberly Casselman

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study was an attempt to examine how poetry integrated with science could assist eighth graders in the memorization of key science vocabulary words. Furthermore, it would investigate if student attitude, interest, and motivation would improve with the use of the poetry. Instruction was adjusted to implement poetry into astronomy lessons. Memorization activities such as poems, chanting, and repetition were used to help students remember the vocabulary and the definitions. Pre/post tests were used to interpret if the poetry did assist in the memorization of the astronomy vocabulary. Science interest surveys and science attitude surveys were used to interpret if …

Droplet Flows In Microchannels Using Lattice Boltzmann Method, Amit Gupta

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) have widespread applications in medical, electronical and mechanical devices. These devices are characterized by the smallest dimension which is at least one micrometer and utmost one millimeter. Rapid progress in the manufacture and utilization of these microdevices has been achieved in the last decade. Current manufacturing techniques of such devices and channels include surface silicon micromachining; bulk silicon micromachining; lithography; electrodeposition and plastic molding; and electrodischarge machining (EDM). In recent years, electrostatic, magnetic, electromagnetic and thermal actuators, valves, gears and diaphragms of dimensions of hundred microns or less have been fabricated successfully. Sensors have been manufactured that …

Learning Semantic Features For Visual Recognition, Jingen Liu

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Visual recognition (e.g., object, scene and action recognition) is an active area of research in computer vision due to its increasing number of real-world applications such as video (image) indexing and search, intelligent surveillance, human-machine interaction, robot navigation, etc. Effective modeling of the objects, scenes and actions is critical for visual recognition. Recently, bag of visual words (BoVW) representation, in which the image patches or video cuboids are quantized into visual words (i.e., mid-level features) based on their appearance similarity using clustering, has been widely and successfully explored. The advantages of this representation are: no explicit detection of objects or …

New Computational Approaches For Multiple Rna Alignment And Rna Search, Daniel Deblasio

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In this thesis we explore the the theory and history behind RNA alignment. Normal sequence alignments as studied by computer scientists can be completed in O(n2) time in the naive case. The process involves taking two input sequences and finding the list of edits that can transform one sequence into the other. This process is applied to biology in many forms, such as the creation of multiple alignments and the search of genomic sequences. When you take into account the RNA sequence structure the problem becomes even harder. Multiple RNA structure alignment is particularly challenging because covarying mutations make sequence …

Parental Involvement With Special Needs Children In A Rural School District, Mary Elizabeth Lenda

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Formalized education has been around for a long time and the role of the parents has been to facilitate their child's academic success. The quality of parenting can vary widely. This study will explore parental involvement in their special needs child's educational process. More specifically, parental involvement with special needs children in a rural school district is the focus explored in the south western New York quadrant of Chautauqua County. Using Baumrind's (1967) research on parenting styles as a framework, the purpose of study is to (a) investigate the styles of parental involvement with children of special needs in rural …

Emotion Knowledge And Relational Aggression In Preschoolers, Karen Morine

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The preschool years are an important time in a child's emotional development. Children learn how to navigate peer relationships and understand the source of others' emotions, one of the most important tasks of this developmental period. Deficits in emotion knowledge have been linked with increased aggressive behaviors and poor peer acceptance. This study's main objective was to clarify whether emotion knowledge is related to relational aggression in young children. In addition, the role of age, sex, siblings, depressed affect, and peer acceptance and rejection was examined in the context of relational aggression. Sixty-six preschool children from ages 3 to 4 …

The Effect Of Participating In School-Wide Positive Behavior Support On Academic Performance And Number Of Office Discipline Referrals, Nadine Sanders

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Schools continue to face the challenge of how to implement a behavior management plan in which students are not likely to become repeat offenders. Traditional management models that are restrictive and punitive have not been effective in bringing about appropriate student conduct. A non-traditional management strategy to improve student behavior is to develop and implement a comprehensive, school-wide set of strategies to support positive behavior and academic performance for all students that is individually tailored to a school's context. School-Wide Positive Behavior Support (SWPBS) occur as part of a three-tiered system. The universal level addresses supports planned and designed for …

Synthesis Of Pyrrolo[2,3-D]Pytimidines And Pytimido[4,5-B]Indoles As Inhibitors Of Multiple Receptor Tyrosine Kinases, Folate Metabolizing Enzymes And Tubulin, Nilesh Zaware

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation deals with the synthesis of substituted pyrrolo[2,3-d]pyrimidines and pyrimido[4,5-b]indoles as potential antitumor agents. The approaches to target tumor cells include inhibition of tumor induced angiogenesis via multiple receptor tyrosine kinase (RTK) inhibition (or) inhibition of the folate metabolizing enzymes - dihydrofolate reductase (DHFR) or thymidylate synthase (TS) (or) inhibition of tubulin.

Alliances In Graphs: Parameterized Algorithms And On Partitioning Series-Parallel Graphs, Rosa Enciso

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Alliances are used to denote agreements between members of a group with similar interests. Alliances can occur between nations, biological sequences, business cartels, and other entities. The notion of alliances in graphs was first introduced by Kristiansen, Hedetniemi, and Hedetniemi in . A defensive alliance in a graph G = (V, E) is a non empty set S ⊆ V where, for all x ∈ S, |N[x] ∩ S| ≥ |N[x] − S|. Consequently, every vertex that is a member of a defensive alliance has at least as many vertices defending it as there are vertices attacking it. Alliances can …

Delay Modeling And Long-Range Predictive Control Of Czochralski Growth Process, Dhaval Shah

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This work presents the Czochralski growth dynamics as time-varying delay based model, applied to the growth of La3Ga5.5Ta0.5O14 (LGT) piezoelectric crystals. The growth of high-quality large-diameter oxides by Czochralski technique requires the theoretical understanding and optimization of all relevant process parameters, growth conditions, and melts chemistry. Presently, proportional-integral- derivative (PID) type controllers are widely accepted for constant-diameter crystal growth by Czochralski. Such control systems, however, do not account for aspects such as the transportation delay of the heat from crucible wall to the crystal solidification front, heat radiated from the crucible wall above the melt surface, and varying melt level. …

Flow Visualization In Microfluidic Expansion And Mixing, Ehsan Yakhshi-Tafti

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Micro particle image velocimetry (microPIV) is a non-intrusive tool for visualizing flow in micron-scale conduits. Using this investigative instrument, two experimental studies were performed to understand flow behaviors in microfluidic channels - a sudden expansion step flow and laminar velocity profile variation in diffusion driven mixing. First, flow in a backward facing step feature (1:5 expansion ratio) in a microchannel was taken as the subject of microPIV flow visualization. The onset and development of a recirculation flow was studied as a function of flow rate. This flow pattern was further used to investigate two major parameters affecting microPIV measurements; the …

The Integrated User Experience Evaluation Model: A Systematic Approach To Integrating User Experience Data Sources, Roberto Champney

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Evaluating the user experience (UX) associated with product interaction is a challenge for current human-systems developers. This is largely due to a lack of theoretical guidance for directing how best to assess the UX and a paucity of tools to support such evaluation. This dissertation provided a framework and tools for guiding and supporting evaluation of the user experience. This doctoral research involved reviewing the literature on UX, using this knowledge to build first build a theoretical model of the UX construct and later develop a theoretical model to for the evaluation of UX in order to aid evaluators – …