Digital Commons Network^™

Investigating Moringa Oleifera Lam As A Dietary Supplement To Promote Immune Health: A Mouse Model, Donja S. Smith

Theses

Moringa oleifera Lam (MOL) is a tree, native to the tropics and sub-tropics of Asia and Africa. All parts are edible and because it is rich in vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants it has many nutritional benefits. For example, many of the vitamins and minerals are known to modulate immunity, suggesting that MOL could be a good dietary supplement to boost immunity. Our lab is interested in identifying natural products that can be used to enhance immunity and health among animals. Therefore, the objective of this study was to investigate immune modulation by Moringa using a mouse model. Two trials were …

Investigating The Apoptotic Response Of Triple Negative Breast Cancer Cells To Styrene, A Potential Poly(Adp-Ribose) Polymerase (Parp) Inhibitor, Shaina Richardson

Theses

Triple Negative Breast Cancer (TNBC) is a rare basal-like subtype of breast cancer characterized by the absence of the estrogen (ER), progesterone (PR), and human epidermal receptor 2 (HER2) receptors which are normally targeted in other breast cancer subtypes, thereby making TNBC difficult to combat. In this study, four different styrene compounds (1.001, 1.006, 1.007, and 1.009) were used to treat TNBC cell lines HCC1806 and HCC70. Each of the compounds were composed of a 3-nitro group on the A ring and varying aryl groups on the B ring of the styrene. The breast cancer cells were exposed over a …

Systemic Optimization Of Microalgae Grown On Swine Wastewater As A Biofuel Feedstock, Rifat Hasan

Theses

This research broadens the scope of research on microalgae grown on swine wastewater as it offers a combination of wastewater treatment and biofuel production. Swine wastewater is an enriched source of phosphorus, nitrogen and other organic compounds that are necessary for the growth of microalgae. While growing in swine wastewater, algae consume the nutrients from the wastewater, so there is no need of arable land for their growth. Current biofuel production relies on limited arable lands to supply feedstock making it impossible to meet the global biofuel demands without disrupting food production. Algae can potentially produce 1,000-4,000 gallons of oil/acre/yr …

Effect Of Oxidative Stress On Human Brain Vascular Pericytes, Rasha Mohamed

Theses

The occurrence of neurodegenerative diseases (NDs) increases with extended life expectancy. The rise in elderly populations is resulting in an increased incidence of cognitive impairment, and a high risk for developing dementia. Oxidative stress is implicated in the pathogenesis of a number of neurovascular disorders, such as Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and Parkinson’s disease (PD). It has also been linked to disruption of blood brain barrier (BBB) in hypoxic-ischemic injury. As part of the neurovascular unit, pericytes are inevitably subjected to insult from oxygen and nitrogen radicals, generated in the central nervous system (CNS), leading to cell dysfunction or damage. In …

Wireless Sensor Networks And Data Fusion For Structural Health Monitoring Of Aircraft, Tori Romell Patterson

Theses

This thesis discusses an architecture and design of a sensor web to be used for structural health monitoring of an aircraft. Also presented are several prototypes of critical parts of the sensor web. The proposed sensor web will utilize sensor nodes situated throughout the structure. These nodes and one or more workstations will support agents that communicate and collaborate to monitor the health of the structure. Agents can be any internal or external autonomous entity that has direct access to affect a given system. For the purposes of this document, an agent will be defined as an autonomous software resource …

Hemocompatibility Of Magnesium Alloys, Nevija A. Watson

Theses

There are over 15 million people living in the United States with cardiovascular disease (CVD). The standard treatment for CVD is stent angioplasty, traditionally bare metal stents have been used for this procedure however they are permanent and can lead to in-stent restenosis. Biodegradable bare metal stents are a suggested solution to this problem because they will degrade over time. Magnesium alloys are the most clinically advanced materials for biodegradable bare metal stents. They have been tested in various clinical trials with promising biocompatibility results; however materials degrade before full healing has occurred. The alloying of magnesium with elements such …

A Study Of Cytocompatibility And Biodegradability Of Az31 Magnesium Alloy In Simulated Airway Surface Lining Fluid, Daniel R. Owuor

Theses

The nature of magnesium alloys to degrade is attributed to the high oxidative corrosion rates which are attractive for a biodegradable medical implant since they will avoid a removal surgery by gradually degrading and being absorbed by the body. In this thesis project, the biocorrosion characteristics of AZ31 Mg alloy are investigated in a simulated physiological solution mimicking the airway surface lining fluid. Particular attention was focused on the effect of carbonate ions present in the solution and porcine stomach mucin added to the test solution to create an in vitro model of the epithelial mucus surfaces mimicking the epithelial …

Combining High Speed Imaging And Acoustic Emission Analysis For Crack Growth In Thick Samples, Jr. Michael Gillespie

Theses

Over 80% of components in a system that undergo fatigue cycling fail due to cracking. Acoustic emission (AE) has become a major resource in non-destructive testing (NDT) for the detection, location, and quantification of cracking events. Normally, AE an event is referred to as crack growth, fretting, or friction. As an AE signal progress through material, the waveform converts into several modes; additionally, attenuation and dispersion may also change the waveform. Furthermore, the noise may intrude into the signal in such a way that by time the signal from the source arrives at the sensor the waveform becomes very complex. …

Meprin Interaction With Osteosarcoma 9 (Os9) And The Hypoxia Response Gene, Hypoxia Inducible Factor 1 (Hif1) Alpha, In Kidney Tubular Cells, Barry L. Martin

Theses

Meprins, metalloproteases that are highly expressed in the brush-border membranes of kidney proximal tubules, have been associated with ischemia-reperfusion induced kidney injury. Osteosarcoma 9 (OS9), a peripheral membrane protein, has been shown to selectively interact with the carboxyl-terminal tail of meprin beta (β). Additionally, OS9 was shown to promote oxygen-dependent degradation of the hypoxia-inducible factor 1α (HIF1α), a protein involved in oxygen homeostasis. However, it is not known if OS9 is a meprin substrate. The objective of this study was to determine if OS9 is a meprin substrate, and whether there is a correlation between expression of meprins, OS9, and …

Effect Of Soil And Irrigation Water On Microbial Quality Of Fresh Produce Grown In North Carolina, Tracie Davis

Theses

Foodborne outbreaks involving Listeria monocytogenes, Salmonella enteritidis, and E. coli O157:H7 from contaminated fresh produce have been increasingly recognized all over the world. The purpose of this research was to determine the effect of irrigation water and soil on microbial quality of leafy greens and tomatoes grown in different parts of North Carolina (NC). Soil and water samples were collected from 4 small farms located in NC and inoculated onto selective media (TSA for total aerobic count, XLT4 for Salmonella spp. (SS), and MacConkey for total E. coli species, EC). All plates were incubated for 48 hours at 37°C. Following …

Skin Cancer - Education And Prevention: The Role Of Social Marketing, Tim Crowley

Theses

Skin cancer is the most common cancer in Ireland and worldwide. Skin cancer rates have been steadily rising in recent times. The high use of sunbeds in both Ireland and the UK is quite worrisome. Skin cancer is caused by over exposure to UV rays or through the use of sunbeds and as a result it is actually a highly preventable disease. It is estimated that 90-95% of all skin cancers are preventable. This thesis focuses on the use of social marketing in order to educate people on the dangers of skin cancer with the eventual aim of making recommendations …

How Is Social Media Changing The Public Relations Industry In Ireland: A Case Study Approach, Linda Wright

Theses

This thesis explores how the evolution of social media technologies are impacting on the Public Relations (PR) Industry in Ireland. It attempts to identify if social media has changed the landscape in which PR Practitioners work and if they believe it has changed the PR Industry in Ireland.

This study attempts to fill the gap in Public Relations research and literature and to merge the social media technologies with the existing Public Relations communication tools.

PR Practitioners recognise the need to embrace social media. However a clear gap exists in the PR industry in Ireland. While some have embraced the …

An Investigation Into Recent Developments In The Regulatory Regime For Financial Accounting In Ireland, Mark James

Theses

In the last decade the Irish accounting regulatory regime has been radically reformed from one consisting largely of private sector regulation to one where public sector regulation has increased importance. This change has taken place within a larger international context of the rise of the regulatory state, and a period of greater convergence between regulatory activities internationally. While an extensive body of research on this topic has accumulated in other countries, particularly America, Irish research has generally been focussed on the role of the accounting profession in this development. This study aims to build on the existing literature by focusing …

Response Of Clostridium Pasteurianum Atcc 6013 To The Presence Of Solvents For Extractive Butanol Fermentation, Mar Piernavieja Hermida

Theses

Butanol is of particular interest as a renewable biofuel. This research investigated the butanol extraction by converting purified glycerol into butanol using C. pasteurianum. The effects of three organic extractive reagents were studied to assess their use in extractive fermentation of butanol. High toxicity was shown by octanol, inhibiting cell growth. Oleyl alcohol not only appeared to be non-toxic but also yielded high butanol concentrations. Methyl oleate seemed to be corrosive to the flasks used in the fermentation process. The maximum butanol yield produced using oleyl alcohol as extractive solvent was 0.436 g/g; this value was higher than any other …

Role Of Surface Topology On Wetting Of Complex Surfaces, Javier Sanchez Santiago

Theses

Wetting and capillary phenomena are important components of chemical engineering processes. Most if not all wetting and capillary phenomena can be explained based on three fundamental tools: (1) the Young-Laplace equation describing curvature of interfaces, (2) the static contact angle relating macroscopic measurements to molecular forces and (3) the effect of solid surface microstructures on interfaces near the three-phase contact line. To understand the role of surface microstructure this thesis revisited a series of experiments started by Brook Taylor and reported by Francis Hauksbee (1712) more than 300 years ago on capillary rise between glass planes forming a narrow wedge …

Development Of An Enzymatic Assay For Nitrification Inhibitors, Christopher A. James

Theses

According to the United Nations, the world population reached the 7 billion mark in 2011 and is anticipated to climb to 8 billion by 2025. All of these people need food, but many do not get enough. To resolve this critical issue, there is a great need to increase food production. The use of fertilizers is one of the more feasible ways to achieve this; however, nitrogen efficiency is notoriously low, with nitrification--the conversion of ammonium to nitrate--being one reason. Nitrification occurs naturally in the soil; and, once nitrate is formed, the probability for losses increases greatly. Among these losses …

On Que(E)Rying University Safe Spaces : Theory, Institution And Pedagogy, Nick Wilbourn

Theses

In the last two decades, efforts to create safe spaces for queer students on university campuses have taken what many consider a significant turn, largely because of work done by the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network (GLSEN). Since GLSEN began its Safe Space campaign in the early 1990s, universities have had a model upon which to base their own campus programs to increase visibility of issues related to queer students. In this thesis I examine whether the concept of safe spaces is a productive way to theorize and discuss those places on university campuses where students can actually feel …

Showups Vs. Lineups : Can Showups Be Reliable?, Alex R. Wooten

Theses

Showups (one-person identifications) have been declared less reliable than traditional lineups (six person group identifications) by the US Supreme Court and social science researchers. A 2 (Perpetrator: Absent vs. Present) x 2 (Retention Interval: Immediate versus Delayed) x 4 (showups, fair lineups, biased lineups, police lineups) between subjects factorial design was employed to determine differences in identification accuracy in each condition. Participants (N = 584) viewed a mock crime video, and then proceeded (immediately or 2 days later) to an identification task. We predicted retention interval to interact with type of identification procedure. Specifically, immediate showups were expected to perform …

Breeding And Preliminary Characterization Of Novel Lentinula Edodes (Shiitake) Strains, Dietrich J. Blum

Theses

In order to increase productivity and yield of the edible shiitake mushroom, Lentinula edodes (Berkley) Pegler, monokaryons from each of six strains, in the culture collection of the Mushroom Biology and Fungal Biotechnology Lab were inter and intra bred to produce 566 novel strains. The objective of this study was to breed and characterize progeny strains for superior mycelial growth and temperature tolerance. Parental strains, monokaryons and their progeny were evaluated for mycelial growth rate at 10-30oC. The mating type of monokaryons and dikaryotic progeny was determined. Five of six parents were found to have homozygous mating type alleles indicating …

Analysis Of Stress Waves Generated During Normal And Oblique Impacts On Aerospace Panels, Gopal Kumaran

Theses

Foreign object impact on aircraft structures is a critical event that can affect the structural integrity and compromise the safety of the aircraft. The aerospace industry devotes a considerable amount of effort to detect impact damage. The real time impact detection and quantification system can improve safety and reduce operation cost. In order to identify the impact damage, it becomes necessary to study the impact location and force history. There are a number of studies on this topic which focus on obtaining an approximate representation of force history in damage events. However, a number of important aspects of foreign object …

Kosovo Legislation To Ensure Implementation Of Regional Economic Development [Presentation Given May 15, 2013], Blerta Miftari

Theses

This capstone project addresses the problem of implementation of regional economic development and aspires to find the way of effectively executing of this process in Kosovo. The main problem of implementation is lack of legislation. Regarding the importance and the benefits that bring regional economic development to Kosovo, this project focused on three main questions. First question was why the Kosovo government should draft legislation for Regional Economic Development. Secondly, what are the advantages for drafting a strategy and law for RED. Thirdly, why should this process have a responsible institution that will lead, coordinate, and support the whole process. …

Thermally-Efficient Tea Set Design, Hawraa Almaqseed

Theses

Understanding the importance of tea in our daily life and provides in depth research on the history of tea, the culture behind drinking tea, the benefits of drinking tea as well as some key statistics involving the world tea consumption. Various health hazards of drinking hot tea or cooling the tea by blowing air from the mouth have been listed at length. This, in turn, throws light on the necessity of coming up with an innovative design for the teapot, teacups, and the accompanying items i.e. the teaspoons and the saucers. Prior to designing the tea set, various materials for …

Implementation, Integration, And Optimization Of A Fuzzy Foreground Segmentation System, Ryan M. Bowen

Theses

Foreground segmentation is often an important preliminary step for various video processing systems. By improving the accuracy of the foreground segmentation process, the overall performance of a video processing system has the potential for improvement. This work introduces a Fuzzy Foreground Segmentation System (FFSS) that uses Mamdani-type Fuzzy Inference Systems (FIS) to control pixel-level accumulated statistics. The error of the FFSS is quantified by comparing its output with hand-segmented ground-truth images from a set of image sequences that specifically model canonical problems of foreground segmentation. Optimization of the FFSS parameters is achieved using a Real-Coded Genetic Algorithm (RCGA). Additionally, multiple …

Cuddlefish, Rebekah Gamin

Theses

"Cuddlefish" is an animated graduate thesis film about a young girl who befriends a giant squid. The story contains themes of rejection, hopefulness, and forgiveness. The film's protagonist, a young girl, ambles alone down a busy boardwalk at dusk. She meets a giant squid who is also in need of companionship, and they become friends. However, it's difficult to be friends with a squid. The film was produced primarily in Autodesk Maya with post-production done in Adobe After Effects and Adobe Premiere. The film has a runtime of three and a half minutes. The protagonist and antagonist of the film, …

Perception Of Poverty: Promoting Social Responsibility Through Multi-Sensory Integration, Daniel Skrok

Theses

Traditional graphic design and marketing rely heavily on visual forms of communication. With advertisements all around us, the constant visual bombardment has led to an over stimulated consumer, creating a challenge for designers to invent alternative ways to capture the audience's attention. Multi-sensory integration overcomes this challenge in my opinion, by integrating more than the sense of sight and is more effective and memorable, because it conveys the core message through multiple senses rather than one. The integration of additional senses within the field, particularly olfactory in my opinion, helps to enhance the overall communication and facilitate a more potent …

Under A Pale Grey Sky: An Interactive Timeline Of Iroquoian Warfare And Its Impact On The Acceleration Of American Colonization, Thomas Weaver

Theses

Early American settlers thought the Iroquois to be a violent, forceful and barbaric amalgamation of Native American Nations. Their organization of warfare, community, and politics allowed them to remain one of the most powerful nations for many years. Conflict with other tribes was a normal part of life for the Iroquois and the surrounding nations. However, as the American settlers began moving towards the frontier, Iroquois conflicts with the Algonquian begin to rise in frequency. This led to weakening of the Iroquois population and allowed the American settlers to usurp land from the Six Nations without considerable opposition.

Creep-O-Meter: A Satirical Guide To Creepers, Alice Hallahan

Theses

The Creep-O-Meter app and book explore, and humorously exploit contemporary psychological and behavioral norms concerning the term "creeper." Together, the app and the book poke fun at people who practice awkward behavior, and humorously guide the user in the correct direction for both recognizing and handling potentially awkward social situations.

The end product is an interactive set of tools that can be used to educate, correct, or repel distasteful behavior.

Subwavelength Surface Plasmons Based On Novel Structures And Metamaterials, Ruoxi Yang

Theses

With the rapid development of nanofabrication technology and powerful computational tools over the last decade, nanophotonics has enjoyed tremendous innovation and found wide applications in ultrahigh-speed data transmission, sensitive optical detection, manipulation of ultra-small objects, and visualization of nanoscale patterns. Surface plasmon-based photonics (or plasmonics) merges electronics and photonics at the nanoscale, creating the ability to combine the superior technical advantages of photonics and electronics on the same chip. Plasmonics focuses on the innovation of photonic devices by exploiting the optical property of metals. In particular, the oscillation of free electrons, when properly driven by electromagnetic waves, would form plasmon-polaritons …

Utilisation Of Spent Dairy Yeast Kluyveromyces Marxianus For The Production Of Flavoured Yeast Extracts., Brendan Mccarra

Theses

Spent dairy yeast Kluyveromyces marxianus (SDYK), a by-product of whey to ethanol fermentations, was investigated as a natural biomass source for the production of alternative flavoured yeast extracts. SDYK which was characterised by a high protein content (55.3% (w/w) ± 0.8) and comparable levels of flavor enhancing amino acids to that of S. cerevisiae was prepared for induced autolysis at different pH values in the presence of inductors sodium chloride and the proteolytic enzyme papain. An induced autolysis process was developed for the production of flavoured yeast extracts in which pH and autolytic treatment applied were found to have a …

How Minority Sporting Organisations In Ireland Are Promoting And Growing Their Sports Using Social Media: A Public Relations Perspective., Peter Lucey

Theses

The aim of this research study was to explore how minority sports organisations in Ireland are using social media to effectively grow and promote their sport. The researcher has analysed how these organisations are currently making use of social media and how it has benefited them in their operations. Relevant secondary literature was studied in depth along with the primary research methods that were used for this study. The research methodology used by the researcher constituted elements of both quantitative and qualitative analyses. Interviews and questionnaires made up the main research tools in addition to an action research approach as …