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Maturation Spawning And Larviculture Of Atlantic Croaker (Micropogonias Undulatus) At Low Salinity, Edithrose Fairweather

Master's Theses

Atlantic Croaker is a popular baitfish among anglers targeting a variety of gamefish in the Gulf of Mexico. Aquaculture of this species could help meet the demand for Croaker, especially during winter when wild-caught Croaker are unavailable. Currently, Croaker aquaculture involves broodstock maturation, spawning, and larval culture at high salinity. This protocol prevents the direct use of coastal water for culture along the Mississippi Gulf coast where salinity is low. This study examined the feasibility of performing hatchery production of Atlantic Croaker at low salinity.

Culture of Croaker broodstock at 10, 20, and 30 psu during the maturation period was …

Characterizing Erad And Antioxidant Response In Ixodes Scapularis Ise6 Cells During Borrelia Infection, Latoyia Downs

Master's Theses

Ticks are hematophagous ectoparasites that transmit a multitude of diseases to humans. Borrelia burgdorferi (BB) and Borrelia miyamotoi (BM) are both tick-borne pathogens that cause disease in humans and are transmitted by the black-legged tick (Ixodes scapularis). A byproduct of blood digestion generates reactive oxygen species that are toxic and cause oxidative stress which promotes cellular damage and dysfunction. The endoplasmic reticulum (ER) is especially affected by oxidative stress, resulting in a buildup of improperly folded proteins in the ER lumen called ER stress. To prevent cellular damage, the tick utilizes an antioxidant system to neutralize ROS and mechanisms …

Online And Offline Identity Gaps: Cross-Contextual Predictors And Psychological Outcome, Ningyang Wang

Master's Theses

Using Communication Theory of Identity as a framework, this study compared an individual’s online and offline personal-enacted identity gap and examined the effect of each personal-enacted identity gap on individuals’ psychological well-being, as well as tested four cross-contextual predictors for online and offline personal-enacted identity gaps.

Survey data were collected from 214 participants on Amazon M-Turk. A sequence of hypotheses was tested. A questionnaire used for measuring individuals’ online personal-enacted identity gap was generated.

The result suggested individuals experience larger personal-enacted identity gap offline, which significantly negative predict individuals’ psychological well-being, whereas online personal-enacted identity gap positively predicts psychological well-being. …

Historical And Contemporary Variables Affecting The Range And Distribution Of Aedes Aegypti, The Yellow Fever Mosquito, In The United States, Nicole Mackey

Master's Theses

Aedes aegypti, the primary mosquito vector of the yellow fever virus, threatens global health by passing on this virus, as well as chikungunya, dengue, and Zika viruses. Through its natural tendency to live in highly urban areas and bite human hosts; understanding the factors that affect the historical and current range of the pest is invaluable (Gubler, 1998). Although these viruses are not normally found in the United States, lack of vaccinations and wide-spread presence of the mosquito could lead to these diseases being reintroduced with potentially devastating effects (Monath, 2001). To determine a partial historical range of A. aegypti …

“Making The World A Better Place To Live In”: Hattiesburg Women’S Literary Organizations And The Formation Of A Progressive Southern City, 1884-1945, Daniella Kawa

Master's Theses

This study examines the activity and impact of white women’s literary clubs in Hattiesburg, Mississippi between 1884 and the end of World War II in 1945. This project examines to what extent women adhered to or broke away from societal norms of the time by involving themselves in intellectually stimulating groups with other women, especially in response to rapidly changing standards of femininity and womanhood during the Progressive era. Women’s literary clubs reveal patterns of women moving out of the home and into a public role, in addition to signifying the new ways in which women fit themselves into a …

Malaria Risk On Ancient Roman Roads: A Study And Application To Assessing Travel Decisions In Asia Minor By The Apostle Paul, Daniel C. Browning Jr

Master's Theses

This study models malaria risks for travelers on ancient Roman roads with the goal of providing a tool for historical assessment of travel accounts from antiquity. The project includes: identification of malaria risk factors and associated spatial datasets, malaria risk model construction, verification and validation against available pre-eradication data, overlay of ancient Roman road data, and an initial case-study application to the journeys of the Apostle Paul, as narrated in the New Testament book, Acts of the Apostles (Acts). The project is intentionally cross-disciplinary in bringing the technical capabilities of GIS to the task of evaluating nuanced textual sources for …

Oh, My Stars: A New Map Of The Universe In Paradise Lost, Michael R. Coats

Master's Theses

Milton’s geographical descriptions in Paradise Lost are heavily influenced by his fascination with maps. Furthermore, his design of the universe in Paradise Lost follows a cartographic style that has led to several attempts at mapping it. These attempts, however, have followed the erroneous assumption that Earth centers the universe. As a result, cosmographical maps of Paradise Lost are inaccurate. I argue that Milton’s universe is Deocentric and provide a new map with a pyramid design that places God at the center of Milton’s universe.

Identification Of Saliva Using Dna Methylation Analysis For Forensic Use, Elizabeth Staples

Master's Theses

The identification of biological fluids is a precursor to determine if further human identification is required in a forensic setting. There are four forensically-relevant biological fluids: blood, semen, vaginal epithelial tissue, and saliva. While serological testing can identify these tissue types to some degree of accuracy, there has recently been momentum in research to use DNA methylation for tissue identification.

In the current study, five potential tissue-specific methylation markers were studied in order to identify locations in the genome that would differentiate saliva from other tissue types. Genomic DNA was extracted from each sample, followed by bisulfite modification, polymerase chain …

Investigation On The Morphology Of Charge-Transfer Complexes In Low Density Polyethylene, Wade Korf

Master's Theses

Fillers are used ubiquitously throughout the fields of polymer and material science to overcome many inherent limitations to polymeric materials (i.e. poor stiffness or strength) and to expand their potential applications. There is a need to develop controllable particle architectures to better understand fundamental structure-property relationships in particle reinforced polymer composites. Charge-transfer complexes (CTCs) can assemble in situ into various needle and dendritic shapes via simple fabrication processes and at low loading levels. In this study, the effect of tetrathiafulvalene (TTF) and 7,7,8,8-tetracyanoquinodimethane (TCNQ) CTC crystallites of various shapes and sizes on composite mechanical properties was investigated in an LDPE …

Dna Methylation Analysis For Tissue And Age Determination For Forensic Human Identification, Lauren Satcher

Master's Theses

Forensic Science is a vital aspect of criminal investigations and new techniques that could be used to advance this field are constantly being investigated. There are current forensic techniques to identify relevant tissues, but tissue specific methylation markers are being examined as a new way for identifying tissue type. In addition, methylation markers are being investigated as a method to determine other relevant information about donors, such as the age of the individual.

In this study, methylation markers were investigated to determine tissue specific markers to differentiate sperm from blood, saliva, and vaginal epithelial cells, and age specific markers to …

Barriers To Health: Understanding The Barriers Faced By Community Intervention Projects, Vera Landrum

Master's Theses

Health disparities affect significant portions of the population and are most often experienced by marginalized communities (Wilkin, 2013). Health disparities are also impacted by geographical location, and hunger often affects rural areas (Dutta, Anaele, & Jones, 2013; Rural Health Information Hub, 2017). This study aims to understand how nonprofit organizations focused on addressing food insecurity disseminate information to members of the local community and how the input of community members impacted the overall food insecurity campaign. This study was conducted by interviewing five nonprofit directors and conducting three focus groups with clients of the. aforementioned organizations. The author found that …

“You Must Live, And Show To The World What They Have Been Doing Here”: The Survival Of The “Rabbits” Of Ravensbrück, Regina Coffey

Master's Theses

The Polish women who would later come to be known as the kroliki or “rabbits” arrived at Ravensbrück with a death sentence. As a result of their work for underground organizations back in Poland, the camp administration planned to execute them within a few years. Because the women were already intended to die, they were chosen as the subjects of experimental operations in which muscles and bones in their legs were mutilated and many of them were injected with various diseases and bacteria. Most of the rabbits survived the experiments, though many were permanently crippled, and several suffered from additional …

Cascaded Linear Regulator With Negative Voltage Tracking Switching Regulator, Ernest Lei

Master's Theses

DC-DC converters can be separated into two main groups: switching converters and linear regulators. Linear regulators such as Low Dropout Regulators (LDOs) are straightforward to implement and have a very stable output with low voltage ripple. However, the efficiency of an LDO can fluctuate greatly, as the power dissipation is a function of the device’s input and output. On the other hand, a switching regulator uses a switch to regulate energy levels. These types of regulators are more versatile when a larger change of voltage is needed, as efficiency is relatively stable across larger steps of voltages. However, switching regulators …

A Time Integration Method Of Approximate Particular Solutions For Nonlinear Ordinary Differential Equations, Cyril Ocloo

Master's Theses

We consider a time-dependent method which is coupled with the method of approximate particular solutions (MAPS) of Delta-shaped basis functions and the method of fundamental solutions (MFS) to solve nonlinear ordinary differential equations. Firstly, we convert a nonlinear problem into a sequence of time-dependent non-homogeneous boundary value problems through a fictitious time integration method. The superposition principle is applied to split the numerical solution at each time step into an approximate particular solution and a homogeneous solution. Delta-shaped basis functions are used to provide an approximation of the source function at each time step. The purpose of this is to …

An Analysis Of Dredge Efficiency For Surfclam And Ocean Quahog Commercial Dredges, Leanne Poussard

Master's Theses

Between 1997 and 2011, The National Marine Fisheries Service conducted 50 depletion experiments to estimate survey gear efficiency and stock density for Atlantic surfclam (Spisula solidissima) and ocean quahog (Arctica islandica) populations using commercial hydraulic dredges. The Patch Model was formulated to estimate gear efficiency and organism density from the data. The range of efficiencies estimated is substantial, leading to uncertainty in the application of these estimates in stock assessment. Analysis of depletion experiment simulations showed that uncertainty in the estimates of gear efficiency from depletion experiments was reduced by higher numbers of dredge tows per experiment, more tow overlap …

Quality Of Life Among Colorectal Cancer Patients During Chemotherapy, Chau Minh Than

Master's Theses

This study had the general goal of surveying the quality of life (QoL) and related factors affecting the QoL of colorectal cancer (CRC) patients participating in cancer chemotherapy at University Medical Center (UMC) in Ho Chi Minh City. The study also had the following specific objectives: (a) determining the demographic and clinical characteristics of CRC patients and (b) determining health-related quality of life (HRQoL) and related factors affecting HRQoL of CRC patients receiving cancer chemotherapy. A descriptive cross-sectional design was used. Sixty CRC patients being treated at the UMC participated in this study. The research used the European Organization for …

Stressors And Coping Styles Among Chronic Hemodialysis Patients In Vietnam, Linh Thi Ngoc Nguyen

Master's Theses

The purpose of this study was to understand stressors experienced and coping styles used by 30 hemodialysis patients in Vietnam and to examine the relationship among stressors, coping styles, and demographics (age, gender, and length of treatment). A quantitative, cross-sectional, descriptive study was conducted. Data collection took place in a government hospital in Ho Chi Minh City. The hospital has 60 hemodialysis machines. The hemodialysis department serves 450 scheduled hemodialysis patients and 60 emergency cases per day. Stressors were divided into two groups: physical and psychosocial. Differences between physical and psychosocial stressors were obtained by dividing raw subscale scores by …

The Effect Of Music On Anxiety Of The Endoscopic Client In A Private Hospital In Ho Chi Minh City Vietnam, Hanh Thi Hong Nguyen

Master's Theses

Gastrointestinal tract cancer is one of the fifth most common cancers in Vietnam and has a high mortality rate in Vietnamese people based on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (2018) global cancer statistics. One-third of adults aged 50 or older, the age group at greatest risk of developing colorectal cancer, have not been screened because endoscopy is considered a stressful procedure. The endoscopic patient sometimes refuses to have the procedure. Therefore, using music to ease the anxiety of endoscopic clients has been examined in various studies but the results have been inconclusive. The aim of this study was …

Evaluation Of Patient Identification Practices By Nurses Working At Saigon Ent Hospital, My Thi Phuong Ngo

Master's Theses

Recently, patient misidentification has been identified as a common error in healthcare systems. Six patient safety recommendations from the World Health Organization (2007) have resulted in research and improvements to increase patient safety. However, patient misidentifications continue and are a challenge to patient safety. Failure to correctly identify patients continues to result in errors with medications, transfusions, diagnostic testing, and wrong person procedures. In the hospital, patient identification is performed throughout the hospitalization stay: at admission, before a treatment procedure or general nursing care, medication administration, and handover from provider to provider. In some hospital settings, this task is supported …

Significant Objects As Metaphor For Home, Alison Wilcox

Master's Theses

This qualitative Arts-Based Research investigated how certain objects come to embody a personal definition of home. Objects that are treasured and are associated with home were defined in this research as significant objects. As the researcher, I selected personally significant objects to study. These objects were studied through still life painting and interviews, based on the work of Barbara Fish (2017). Data were then refined into a final reflection painting. This study indicated that significant objects are often denied their intended function, are tied to idealized memories, and help to reconnect the owner to confidence that may have been lost …

Zebrafish Eye Development: Rac And The Creepy Crawlers Of The Eye, Zvi Murry

Master's Theses

During vertebrate eye development the optic vesicles protrude from either side of the brain and form the optic cups. As an optic cup starts to surround the lens a groove on the ventral side of the eye forms, known as the choroid fissure (CF). Normally, the CF will close around the optic nerve and hyaloid vasculature. If this process does not occur properly it results in a keyhole opening in the eye known as coloboma. This results in blindness and affects nearly 1 in 4-5,000 births. Zebrafish were utilized as a model for eye development to study CF closure (CFC) …

Type 3 T Helper Cell And Myeloid Derived Suppressor Cell Population Dynamics In A Mammary Carcinoma Model, Viva Rase

Master's Theses

Immunotherapies that augment Type I immunity show robust responses in diffuse blood cancers yet remain relatively ineffective in breast and other solid tumor malignancies. Breast tumor resistance to immunotherapies is associated with polarization towards pro-tumor Type 2 immunity, as well as the expansion of a myeloid derived suppressor cell (MDSC) population that inhibits Type 1 T helper (Th) and CD8+ cytotoxic T cells. Does polarization toward Type 3 immunity play a role in mammary tumor formation? This question had not been investigated prior to these studies despite established relationships between MDSCs and Type 3 Th cells in other inflammatory pathologies. …

The Role Of Gibberellic Acid In Aphid-Plant-Arbuscular Mycorrhizal Fungus Interactions, Drew Olson

Master's Theses

Arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi form beneficial associations with the roots of most terrestrial plants, which is mostly characterized by increased plant nutrient acquisition (phosphate and nitrogen) by the fungi in exchange for carbon and lipids from the plants. These associations can also enhance plant coping mechanisms to abiotic and biotic stresses. However, insect herbivores, such as aphids, can benefit from AM fungi-plant symbioses by altering plant defenses that are driven mainly by the phytohormones jasmonic acid (JA) and salicylic acid (SA). Nevertheless, other phytohormones can modulate plant defenses by altering the balance of the JA and SA signaling pathways, such …

The Synthesis And Characterization Of Gold Nanoparticles Prepared With Novel Thioether-Ionic Liquids, Joie Games

Master's Theses

Gold nanoparticles have found a broad range of applications in the biomedical field including in drug delivery and biosensor development.The latter applications take advantage of a unique optical property called surface plasmon resonance. Easily accessible “bottom-up” synthesis methods are commonly used for the preparation of metal nanoparticles, in which a metal precursor is reduced in the presence of a stabilizing agent to prevent aggregation. Ionic liquids have been used in “bottom up” metal nanoparticle syntheses as stabilizing agents and as a means to functionalize metal nanoparticles’ surface. Due to the strength of gold-sulfur interactions, thiol-stabilized gold nanostructures are of great …

Dracula Trio, Justino Perez

Master's Theses

Dracula Trio is a three-movement work for violin, violoncello, and piano-forte. This work follows an abbreviated plot of the popular video game and animated show by the name of Castlevania. Castlevania follows Dracula, a powerful vampire that falls in love with a human woman. After their marriage, Dracula’s wife is murdered by fellow humans after she is suspected of being a witch, which causes Dracula to seek revenge on all of humanity. Characterized by contrasting harmonic vocabulary and textures, the work seeks to bring to music the dramatic arc of the Castlevania story line using composition techniques from the last …

Pismo Clams (Tivela Stultorum) In Califorina: Population Status, Habitat Associations, Reproduction, And Growth, Alexandria R. Marquardt

Master's Theses

Marine shellfish play a vital role in intertidal ecosystems and coastal communities, but many of these fisheries are small-scale and lack the necessary monitoring to ensure long-term sustainability. Effective management often requires information on key demographic parameters, such as population status, reproduction and growth. Pismo clams (Tivela stultorum) are a culturally important and iconic species in California, which supported a thriving commercial and recreational fishery throughout much of the 1900’s. However, Pismo clam populations have declined statewide in recent decades and are attributed to human harvest and predation by California sea otters (Enhydra lutris); However, no …

The Development And Evaluation Of A New Analytical Model For The Characterization Of Friction Induced Disc Brake Vibration, Michael Vladimirov

Master's Theses

This research proposes a new method of modeling vibration of disc brake systems. This modeling method treats the brake pads of a disc braking system as lumped spring-mass-damper subsystems and the disc as a continuous bar. This modeling concept increases both the ease of analytical expression and the insight provided into the behavior of the real-world systems. This paper describes the analytical expression of this model and its implementation in Matlab. A parameter variation study yielded results that agree with existing research, which serves to validate the fundamental principles of this proposed modeling method.

Dewatering Of Chlorella Through Carbon Dioxide Hydrate Formation For Biofuel Production, Charles Dow

Master's Theses

Renewable energy alternatives are currently of interest to meet ever-growing energy demands due to fossil fuel depletion and climate change. Biofuels, an alternative source, can be made from a range of organic matter. One option is algae, which can be grown without impacting food production and in a variety of conditions, however, the feasibility of converting algae into biofuel is of concern. Dewatering algae is a critical step in the process to make oil extraction more efficient. This study utilizes carbon dioxide clathrate hydrates as a novel process to dewater water saturated algae solutions. Clathrate hydrates are crystalline solids formed …

Multiple Input Single Output Converter With Maximum Power Point Tracking For Renewable Energy Applications, Kenneth K. Nguyen, Taufik Taufik

Master's Theses

In this thesis, a maximum power point tracking (MPPT) for multiple input single output (MISO) converter is presented such that power generated from multiple individual energy sources can be combined to deliver the maximum amount of power to a common resistive load. Typically, MISO converters will employ techniques that yield equal current sharing from each energy source. However, this may not be desirable since each source may be rated at different power ratings and/or may experience different operating conditions, preventing the system MISO converter to acquire the most available total power from the sources. Utilizing MPPT control would therefore be …

Cruise Ship Ports And Human Capital Development: The Case Of Mexico, Jorge Herrera

Master's Theses

The cruise ship industry, the fastest-growing segment in the leisure travel market, has contributed significantly to the economic transformation of developing countries, particularly in the Caribbean Basin. This paper applies a difference-in-differences methodology to examine the causal impact of the introduction of cruise ship ports on human capital development in Mexico, as reflected by educational attainment. Using variations in school enrollment, segregated by gender and age across states and municipalities, I find that the economic consequences derived from this form of tourism do not translate into incremental, permanent improvements in all quality of life indicators considered, most saliently in schooling. …