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Making Sense Of Public Scientific Controversy: A Case Study Examining Science Communication And Public Engagement Surrounding Genetically Modified Mosquitoes In The Florida Keys, Cynthia Taylor

Open Access Dissertations

This dissertation presents a discursive case study of a recent public scientific controversy surrounding proposed field trials of Oxitec’s genetically modified (GM) mosquitoes in the Florida Keys. Despite endorsements by the Florida Keys Mosquito Control District, starting in 2011, and the US Food and Drug Administration’s approval in 2016, field trial releases in the region have been stalled by intense public opposition. The research presented here attempts to better understand the nature of this controversy through a close examination of science communication and public engagement efforts. Avoiding the assumption that resistance to scientific and technological interventions is reducible to a …

Coastal New England Septic System Drainfields: Groundwater Table And Greenhouse Gas Cycling Dynamics, Alissa H. Cox

Open Access Dissertations

Septic systems, or onsite wastewater treatment systems (OWTS), are a common means of treating wastewater across the world in areas where centralized wastewater treatment is not a feasible option. In the US, one in five households are served by septic systems, with a quarter to over half of New England households relying on this technology to treat wastewater. A well-functioning septic system protects public health by reducing pathogen loading to ground and surface waters, and attenuating nutrients and pollutants found in wastewater before it is recharged to local groundwater. However, not all wastewater constituents are removed during these processes, and …

Investigating The Role Of Vascular Activation In Alzheimer’S Disease-Related Neuroinflammation, Jaclyn M. Iannucci

Open Access Dissertations

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is the most common form of dementia, affecting 5.8 million people in the United States alone. Currently, there are no disease-modifying treatments for AD, and the cause of the disease is unclear. With the increasing number of cases and the lack of treatment options, AD is a growing public health crisis. As such, there is a push for investigation of novel pathological mediators to inform new therapeutic approaches.

Cardiovascular disease and associated cardiovascular risk factors (CVRFs) are linked to a significantly increased risk for developing AD, but the mechanisms whereby these risk factors contribute to the pathological …

Ecologies Of Materiality And Aesthetics In British Modernist War-Time Literature, 1890-1939, Molly Volanth Hall

Open Access Dissertations

This dissertation examines landscape representation in English novels, memoirs, manifestos, and poetry between 1890 and 1939 responding to World War I and the larger dynamics of imperialism of which it is a part. Analyzing how such works reflect and reshape dominant environmental perception during the early twentieth century’s marked acceleration of mass warfare and ecological change, it reads for the way images of mud, stone, land, and soil—collected under the term base matters—express the entanglement of environmental and national structures of feeling ranging from fear to dissociation. These base matters dominate characters’ and authors’ changing perception of the material world …

Cluster Profiles Of The Drinking Motives In A Sample Of Firefighters And Emts, Joshua A. Muniz

Open Access Dissertations

Despite the extensive literature that exists on alcohol use, misuse, and drinking to cope, a drinking culture remains prevalent in occupations that experience high volumes of induced occupational stress and exposure to trauma. To our knowledge, patterns of alcohol use motives have never been characterized in a firefighter/emergency medical technician (FF/EMT) sample, nor have they been evaluated in the context of other relevant factors. The current study investigated the Drinking Motives Questionnaire-revised (DMQ-r) within a sample of FF/EMT who reported that they currently drink alcohol (N=183). This study sought to confirm the factor structure of the DMQ-r, identify empirically derived …

The Human Dimensions Of Coral Reef Restoration: A Case Study In The Spermonde Islands Of Indonesia, Jessica Vandenberg

Open Access Dissertations

This study employs a decolonial multidisciplinary approach to explore the sociocultural dimensions of a corporate-led coral reef restoration program implemented in a small island community in Indonesia framed as a conservation and food security initiative. Coral Reef Restoration (CRR) has gained increased attention as a coral conservation tool to supplement traditional approaches to tropical marine management (Boström-Einarsson et al. 2020). Like many other forms of conservation, CRR programs are often posed as dual conservation and development programs, aimed at achieving both ecological and social outcomes. Despite the intention to meet both conservation and development goals, CRR studies have been criticized …

Evaluation Of A Photograph-Based Citizen Science Program As A Tick Surveillance And Prevention Education Tool, Heather Lynn Kopsco

Open Access Dissertations

The multitude of factors fueling the escalation in tick-borne disease in the United States is further complicated by gaps in public knowledge and inconsistent adherence to tick-bite prevention behaviors. Passive tick surveillance is a growing strategy to monitor tick species trends and associated pathogen prevalence across the country. Most practice involves citizens shipping encountered ticks to a laboratory for identification and pathogen testing, but given potential delays in mailing and processing time, tick bite victims may be placed outside the window of potential prophylactic options, or under unnecessary antibiotic administration. Recently, photographed-based tick surveillance has been shown to be a …

Right-Shoring: Offshoring To Reshoring For A Sustainable Manufacturing Location Decision In The Healthcare Industry, Gawon Yun

Open Access Dissertations

Firms have increasingly offshored manufacturing to foreign countries in the past decades due to the expected benefits driven by low manufacturing costs in developing economies. With changes in competition and government pressure for domestic production, however, manufacturing firms have reevaluated these decisions leading some to reshore manufacturing activities. Recent studies have investigated various reshoring motivations and developed conceptual frameworks that can be used as tools in reshoring decisions. However, the complexity in decision making remains high due to product and industry specific traits impacting the manufacturing process. Examples include the increasing concern over product quality and changing regulations. Two industries …

Reading The Reader: Analyzing Depictions Of Male Readers In Serial Victorian Fiction, Ashton Foley-Schramm

Open Access Dissertations

During the nineteenth century, mass literacy was taking hold in Britain, spurred on by the widespread availability of printed materials, crossing class and gender borders as never before. Most literary scholars concerned with reading in nineteenth-century England investigate the female reader within fiction, analyzing the various cultural, especially social and gender-specific, aspects of how, where, why, and what women read. This project addresses the gap in our knowledge created by this focus on the female reader in Victorian fiction: the position and function of the male reader. It argues that concerns over too much reading, or not reading the “right” …

The Mark Of The Vanishing Reader: Intradiegetic Interaction In Multimodal Narrative, Catherine Ann Winters

Open Access Dissertations

What is a book? What do we expect to find in books? Who is the twenty-first-century reader? Such questions have proliferated over the last thirty years as the anxiety of the death of the book and the vanishing reader has loomed over literature. In this dissertation, I explore how twenty-first-century American multimodal narrative books featuring intradiegetic readers (a character who reads a story within the storyworld) represent the possibilities and limits of the print book to engage the informed reader in a changing media ecology. The books in this study are not merely testing the limits of how stories can …

Molecular Mechanism Of Polypeptide Insertion Into Bilayer And Exit, Gregory Slaybaugh

Open Access Dissertations

The pH-low insertion peptide (pHLIP) and pH-low insertion cycle (pHLIC) have been shown to target cancer cells and inflammation due to the acidic environment present at those sites. It has been demonstrated that pHLIP’s and pHLIC’s pH dependent behavior stems from the protonation and deprotonation of aspartic acid (Asp) and glutamic acid (Glu) residues. A decrease in pH leads to the protonation of Asp/Glu located in membrane-inserting part of peptides, which increases the overall hydrophobicity of pHLIP and pHLIC and triggers the insertion across a lipid bilayer.

Despite similarity of pHLIP and pHLIC ability to sense pH at cell surfaces …

Icg- And Gnp-Phlip: Novel Agents For Imaging And Therapy, Troy M. Crawford

Open Access Dissertations

After heart disease, cancer is the leading cause of death in the U.S. According to the National Cancer Institute, approximately 38% of the population will be diagnosed with cancer at some point over the course of their life. This number is only expected to increase with the increased age of the general public due to medical progress, leading to an increased importance in finding effective and convenient treatment that can be used across a wide array of cancers.

In theory, any tumor can be destroyed using enough of a cytotoxic method, whether it be heating, radiation, surgery, or chemotherapy. However, …

Lsvt®Big Exercise-Induced Neuroplasticity In People With Parkinson’S Disease: An Assessment Of Physiological And Behavioral Outcomes, Christine Marie Clarkin

Open Access Dissertations

Background and Purpose

The primary aim of this study was to investigate the impact of LSVT.BIG, an intensive, whole-body, amplitude-based exercise protocol for people with Parkinson’s disease (PwPD), on functional mobility, quality of life, and markers of neuroplasticity. A secondary aim was to evaluate correlations between neurobiological measures (serum brain derived neurotrophic factor - sBDNF) and functional changes associated with the intervention.

Methods

Nine people with Parkinson’s disease (PwPD), age = 69.9 years Å} 4.9, were recruited from the local community and enrolled in LSVT BIG, which includes 16, one-hour individual treatment sessions delivered over one month (4 sessions per …

Evaluation Of Key Perfluoroalkyl Substances To Induce Liver Steatosis In Mouse And Human Models, Emily Sara Marques

Open Access Dissertations

Per- and poly-fluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are a class of synthetic chemicals that have been released into the environment over the past six decades. Some perfluoroalkyl acids (PFAA), such as perfluorooctanesulfonic acid (PFOS) and perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), have been associated with hepatic steatosis in rodents and monkeys, however it is unclear if lipid accumulation occurs in humans. This thesis explores the liver effects of PFAS on non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, or NAFLD, using mouse and primary human hepatocytes. The central hypotheses are that diet and liver lipid composition alter PFAS-induced outcomes, and PFAS structure (i.e. functional groups and chain length) will …

Subseafloor Porewater Paleosalinity And Nitrogen Isotopes, Kira Louise Homola

Open Access Dissertations

Sedimentary porewater chemical and isotopic profiles contain complex records of past bottom water composition which are overprinted by in situ biotic and abiotic reactions. We developed a density-based method to determined relic deep water salinities and applied it to map global scale water mass properties and distributions in the deep northwest Atlantic at four previously unsampled sites. Paleosalinities determined by density have higher precision and accuracy than previously published results and confirm the northward expansion of southern deep water and a reversal in the Atlantic’s bottom water meridional salinity gradient during the Last Glacial Maximum (Chapter 1 & 2).

Nitrogen …

Raise Your Glass: A Culture Evaluation Of Diatoms As Archives Of Past Nutrient Consumption, Colin Anthony Jones

Open Access Dissertations

Nitrate is the most common limiting nutrient in the ocean and plays a critical role in the extent and intensity of marine primary production, and therefore the global ocean’s biological pump. Characterization of the supply and demand of nitrate constrains how ocean biology may regulate climate, so understanding the degree of nitrate consumption in the past is a fundamental step towards understanding controls on past climate. The nitrogen isotopic composition (as δ¹⁵N) of phytoplankton biomass can be used to infer the degree of nitrate consumption in nitrate-replete surface waters such as the Southern Ocean. This signal is recorded …

Molecular Modeling Of Normal Modes And Dynamics In Aromatic Rings, Peptides, And A Complex Lipid Bilayer, Faramarz Joodaki

Open Access Dissertations

Interest in studying anti-microbial peptides (AMPs) has increased becasue of their potential as future applicable antibiotic drugs. In my research under supervision of Professor Michael L. Greenfield, we attempt to understand the structure and dynamics of a novel hybrid AMP LM7-2, which was designed previously in Professor Lenore M. Martin’s research group (Cell and Molecular Biology Department at URI). Several experimental studies have successfully investigated mechanisms of AMPs against bacteria and shown that AMPs attack the membrane of bacteria and induce bacteria death. However, there is still much uncertainty in the exact mechanisms because of experimental restrictions. Hence, studying the …

Potential Value Of Gear-Based Management For Coral Reef Fisheries And Conservation, Paul Carvalho

Open Access Dissertations

Access to markets and globalization has fueled the expansion of fishing pressure in coral reef fisheries and has consequently led to overfishing on many reefs around the world. Overfishing has profound consequences for reef ecosystems and the people that rely on reef resources for nutrition and income. Collecting fisheries-dependent data required for traditional stock assessment methods that guide management is often infeasible for coral reefs due to the small-scale, dispersed, multi-species, and multi-gear nature of these fisheries. In addition, coral reefs are concentrated in developing countries that often have inadequate capacity for management and enforcement, which limits the effectiveness of …

Fictions Of Captivity: Racializing Religion In Early U.S. Literature And Culture, Serap Hidir

Open Access Dissertations

This dissertation focuses on rarely explored but widely prevalent representations of non-Christian religions in fictional captivity narratives, specifically those that paint America as a new and independent nation. It argues that religious depictions in early American literature are extensions of racial meaning-making that become embedded in U.S. national identity. The representations of the heathen, in relation to Muslims and converted Jews in North Africa on an international scale, and domestically with the indigenous Pequots, consolidates American unity as Christian at its base. Particularly, the discussions of how and which populations are easily assimilated reveals an intricate triangulation of religious affiliation, …

Drug-Induced Liver Injury: A Predictive Model, Mitochondrial Toxicity Mechanisms Risk, And Antipsychotic Medications Risk In A Real-World Setting, Payal Rana

Open Access Dissertations

Drug-induced liver injury (DILI) is one of the leading reasons for clinical candidate termination during drug discovery and development. Similarly, many drugs have received a black-box warning or withdrawn from the market due to DILI. It is reported that DILI is the 4th leading cause of liver disease leading to liver failure. It is estimated that the DILI has an annual incidence rate of 13.9 ± 2.4 cases per 100,000 people, translating to about 44,000 liver injury patients in the United States each year. Despite tremendous research in the predictive field, liver injury prediction using in vitro and in vivo …

Between Siblings: How The Sibling Metaphor Reimagines Affective Entanglements In The Victorian Novel, Beth Leonardo Silva

Open Access Dissertations

Throughout the long nineteenth century, characters in novels are often described as being like siblings to other characters. Frequently, such sibling-like characters end up being the protagonist’s most desirable marriage partner. While older literary criticism assumed that such coding was meant to invoke themes of incest, more recent scholarship has begun to investigate how such characters can inform our understanding of the dramatic historical shifts in family structure and alliance (from the biological to the conjugal), as well as changes in what motivated and validated marriages. In either case, the scholarship assumes that the reference to siblinghood places unrelated characters …

Single-Walled Carbon Nanotubes For Advanced Optical Materials, Wearable Biosensing, And Bioimaging, Mohammad Moein Safaee

Open Access Dissertations

Single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs) functionalized with synthetic or natural polymers are a class of advanced optical nanomaterials that have recently found applications in a wide range of molecular diagnostics platforms as biosensors and bioimaging agents. Despite their widespread applications, there is an urgent need to develop standard characterization assays to evaluate their optical, physical, and interfacial properties in vitro and in complex biological environments. The results from such assays are essential for defining general design principles for nanotube-based optical probes and biosensing devices. Moreover, to fully exploit the nanotube's unique properties for health monitoring, it is essential to employ micro- …

Characteristics And Potential Management Of Indonesia’S Deepslope Demersal Fishery, Elle Wibisono

Open Access Dissertations

The deep-slope demersal fishery in Indonesia is a deep-water (50-500 m) fishery targeting multiple snapper (Lutjanidae), grouper (Epinephelidae), croaker (Scianidae), jack and trevally (Carangidae), and emperor (Lethrinidae) species. Many target species have slow growth rates, later age at maturity, and extended longevity making them particularly vulnerable to over-exploitation. This fishery is economically important and positions Indonesia as the second-largest snapper exporter globally. Fishers utilize dropline, longline, mix-gears (dropline and longline concurrently), traps, and gillnets, depending on the fishing grounds’ habitats. However, the main fishing gears are droplines and longlines. Vessel sizes vary from 1 gross ton (GT) to 150 GT, …

Distribution Of Novel And Legacy Organic Pollutants In Seabirds From Contrasting Marine Environments, Anna Ruth Robuck

Open Access Dissertations

Despite their ubiquity in the environment, large data gaps exist surrounding the distribution, biotic accumulation, and possible impacts of many high priority organic pollutants, particularly those considered emerging contaminants. Emerging pollutants, or contaminants of emerging concern (CECs), represent a dynamic and rapidly evolving group of substances, some of which have been extant for decades. Chapter 1 provides background about CECs covered in this dissertation, and highlights key data gaps explored within this work.

The first three manuscripts of this dissertation (Chapters 2 – 5) focus on per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS. PFAS are a family of CECs that demonstrate …

How Landscape Change Affects Commercial And Recreational Fishermen’S Perceptions And Place Meanings, Talya Syvann Ten Brink

Open Access Dissertations

It is critical to plan for environmental change in order to mitigate its adverse effects on human wellbeing. This series of manuscripts examines the impacts of landscape change on commercial and recreational fishermen. Each manuscript provides a unique perspective on place meaning and place change. Using a mixed methods approach, data were collected and analyzed on fishermen’s perceptions of familiar places and on the changes that these places undergo. The first manuscript investigates the impact of offshore wind farms on commercial and recreational fishermen, using the first offshore wind farm in North America – the Block Island Wind Farm (Rhode …

Shock Response Of Soft Materials For Structural Applications, Koray Senol

Open Access Dissertations

Soft materials have been used extensively as energy absorbers in different industries such as marine, protective equipment, automotive, aerospace and transportation due to their light weight, low impedance, low mechanical stiffness and low strength. Foams, rubbers, polymers, hydrogels, and biological tissues are some examples of soft materials. Low density closed cell foams are widely used in marine and transportation industry as energy absorbers due to their light weight and low impedance. Mechanical responses of these materials are very sensitive to loading medium, rate and direction. Fundamental investigation into the mechanical response of these materials is paramount before they can be …

Tailoring Digital Health To Improve The Nutrition And Health Of People With Parkinson’S Disease, Dara Lyn Lobuono

Open Access Dissertations

Parkinson’s disease (PD) is an incurable, neurodegenerative movement disorder, impacting nearly one million Americans. By 2030 the number of people with PD (PwPD) is expected to double and with this growing population, informal caregiver responsibility will also increase. Nutritional status worsens as PD progresses, which impacts cognition, body composition, ability to perform activities of daily living (ADL) and quality of life (QOL), and increases caregiver burden. Nutritional screening and intervention for PwPD can improve health outcomes, but are often excluded from PD treatment plans.

Given the negative impact of PD on mobility and increased caregiver burden, digital technology could improve …

Influence Of Parent And Community Factors On Infant Snacking, Amy Michelle Moore

Open Access Dissertations

Snacking has increased among young children in recent decades, yet little is known about snacking during infancy. Therefore, three studies were conducted to explore the influence of parent and community factors on infant snacking. Across the three studies, findings suggest that infants are snacking on less healthy foods, mothers may offer snacks to prevent hunger and manage infant behavior, and less healthy snacks are widely available in the retail food stores. The first study was a secondary analysis of data from the Nurture study that examined the prevalence of less healthy snack intake at three time points (4-6, 7-9, and …

Gold And Copper-Cysteamine Nanoparticles For Radiation Therapy Enhancement On Cancer, Bindeshwar Sah

Open Access Dissertations

Radiation therapy is a common technique to kill cancer cells. The purpose of this experiment is the enhancement of radiation effect on the treatment of tumors. The main difficulty of radiation therapy is that it can damage cancerous cells as well as healthy cells. Gold nanoparticles can enhance effects of the radiation treatment on tumors due to the interaction of radiation with gold nanoparticles to produce extra electrons through the Auger effect. This causes reduced side effects on healthy cells though using less radiation dose and maximizes radiation damage on cancer cells through the extra electrons produced by the gold …

Developing Stimuli-Responsive Biomaterial Systems For Drug Delivery In Tissue Engineering And Cancer Chemotherapy, Seyedeh Zahra Moafi Madani

Open Access Dissertations

Controlled and sequential drug delivery is a strategy to enhance the therapeutic effectiveness of drugs in a variety of biological processes and disease states. While many different drug delivery systems are developed recently, most cannot generate temporally complex delivery profiles of multiple therapeutics. These temporally complex profiles are critical for applications such as bone regeneration and cancer chemotherapy, where an orchestrated delivery of multiple drugs is required for an optimal outcome.

Here, we developed three distinct biomaterial systems that each enable on-demand controlled or sequential drug release. These systems are based on varying external stimulus such as magnetic stimulation, radiofrequency …