Digital Commons Network^™

Smart Tracking For Healthier Lifestyle, Shiwen Ding

Theses

Smart Tracking for healthier lifestyle is an interactive prototyping application to monitor sugar intake. For most individuals, their amount of sugar intake is much higher than the amount they need per day. Many people like sweet food as they find that it makes them satisfied and relaxed. People tend to consume sugar unconsciously eating cakes, candies, drinking soft-drinks, juice, and even coffee. Regular consumption of these foods substantially increases the amount of sugar people consume. It has been found that people are less conscious of their sugar intake in regard to drinking liquids than eating solid foods. Parents are very …

Evaluation Of Phytochemical Composition And Anti-Cancer Potential In Root Extracts Of Moringa Peregrina (Forssk.) Fiori, Salama Khamis Sultan Saeed Al Kaabi

Theses

Natural products provide many bioactive lead molecules for the discovery of new medicines. Naturally, derived phytochemicals have exhibited tremendous biological activities including anticancer activity. More than 60% of antitumor medicines are closely associated with natural products. In the present study, hexane, chloroform, acetone and, methanol extracts from roots of Moringa peregrina were screened for phytochemical analysis and anticancer activity. Phytochemical analysis was performed by Gas Chromatography and Mass spectrometry (GC-MS). The anticancer potential of the extracts was done on the human breast cancer cell line (MCF-7) and cell viability was measured using WST-1 Cell Proliferation Assay Kit. The cell line …

Prevalence, Antibiotic-Resistance And Growth Profile Of Vibrio Spp., Isolated From Imported Fish In The Local Markets, Tarfa Ali Mohamed

Theses

Seafood and fish are important food components for a large section of the world population. Seafood is prone to bacterial contamination, many are pathogenic to human and marine animals, and three species, Vibrio mimicus, Vibrio parahaemolyticus, and Vibrio vulnificus, are responsible for most cases of seafood-related human illness caused by Vibrio species. The study on the prevalence of these microorganisms in seafood of the United Arab Emirates is vital due to the cultural background of the Emiratis as a coastal heritage. A study was conducted to assess the prevalence of Vibrio spp. in imported fishes from local …

Aesthetics Of Food: The Role Of Visual Framing Strategies For Influence Building On Instagram, Shuhan Yang

Theses

This thesis employs quantitative content analysis to investigate how social media influencers use aesthetic image design to engage followers. The study investigates the ten most-followed food influencers on Instagram in the United States. The study looks at the effectiveness of visual framing strategies, focusing on the images (N = 120) of influencers which have received more than 10,000 likes in 2017. Results show that food influencers prefer to post images about cooked food, without any decorations, using high contrast colors and close-up shots. Raw food images were found to be associated with cluttered composition and far away shoots, whereas cooked …

The Relationship Between Religion And Diet-Related Disparities In African American Men., Joel Hamilton

Theses

This study utilized a cross-sectional design to report quantitative results. Equal numbers of African American men, religious and non-religious, were sought out for comparison. Participants must have identified as African American, been 30 years of age or older, and lived within 10 miles of Carbondale, IL during the time of the study. African American men are at an increased risk of developing many diet-related disparities. This study aimed to see if religion influenced these factors.

Spatial And Temporal Variation In The Diet Composition Of Zooplankton In Mission Bay, Bryanna Paulson

Theses

Analyses of quantitative data on zooplankton diets are vital for understanding the drivers of zooplankton abundance within an ecosystem. Such analyses also provide insight into trophic pathways within the lower planktonic food web, which support populations of higher trophic level species. This study used carbon and nitrogen stable isotope ratios of size-fractionated plankton in Mission Bay, San Diego, CA to examine the spatial and temporal variation in zooplankton trophic ecology and determine potential environmental drivers of zooplankton community structure. Carbon stable isotopes reflect primary production sources in an organism’s diet, and nitrogen stable isotope ratios can be used to estimate …

Tomato Puree Convective Heat Transfer Simulation Using Boussinesq Approximation, Matteo Fabbri

Theses

With the advance of new technologies, the food industries are requiring systems that allow to produce the desired products with faster rates at cheaper costs. In this case, the study was initiated with the purpose to better understand what happens inside a package containing tomato puree when this is heated above 343 K in a tunnel pasteurizer. If the fluid must reach the thermal and microbiological condition of “pasteurization”, the system must guarantee that the temperature (around 343° Kelvin) is kept for a certain time allowing to pasteurize even the cooler package’s fluid-particle. The faster the system can heat the …

Emely Peguero’S Case: News Frames And Gender Stereotypes In The Dominican Republic, Maria Fernanda Simo

Theses

Gender-based violence is a controversial topic in the Dominican Republic that affects many families, and is a cause of more than 200 women dying every year from it. Journalists have an important influence in the country, making information more noticeable and memorable. Using framing theory, this study analyzed news stories reported by three Dominican newspapers (El Diario Libre, Listin Diario, and Grupo Corripio) to identify news frames and gender stereotypes in Emely Peguero’s coverage, who was a pregnant young woman murdered by her boyfriend in the Duarte Province of the Dominican Republic. A quantitative content analysis of (N = 185) …

Breastfeeding Discourse On Social Media, Andrea L. Whittemore

Theses

Using feminist theory, this study focuses on discourse around breastfeeding on Twitter. Using a mixed-methods approach, I first examine the use of the hashtag #breastfeeding on Twitter to identify the networks driving the discourse. The discourse analysis was completed to explore how feminist principles and mothers’ agency were represented in tweets related to breastfeeding. The results, based on (N = 2,818) tweets, show that discourses are seen as breastfeeding as “natural” and “primary,” bottle feeding as second best, sexualization versus the natural functions of the breast, breastfeeding as a provocative act, mothering as a public or private nexus, breastfeeding related …

Designing Emotional Content Into The Mouthfeel Of Food, Shahd Zubier

Theses

Processed foods may lack nutritional value; however, they are inexpensive, convenient, and highly palatable or satisfying to consumers. All of these factors impact the relationships we have with food. One of the reasons why processed foods are enjoyable is the variation of sensorial qualities it provides. Our senses facilitate our connection with food, we observe the color and form visually, we examine the texture with our hands and mouth, we hear the crunch of a crispy chip. All of these factors are considered in the realm of food design. Designers can contribute to this area by applying the Design Thinking …

Senso - A Real-Time Interactive Mobile System To Improve Users’ Overall Skin Condition, Wenyue Zhan

Theses

Healthy skin is a critical part of overall health for everyone and not only important for appearance. Useful information about the skin is often overwhelming, misleading, or difficult to obtain. There are many factors that affect the skin’s condition, from environmental conditions like UV, humidity, or lifestyle factors like diet and the amount of sleep a person gets to specific ingredients in cosmetics. All this makes the effective management of skin health time consuming and inaccurate without knowing where to find the right information.

This project explores a theoretical system that is designed to help users understand and manage their …

Oil Dependency And National Food Security: A Case For Nigeria, Alexandra A. Akaakar

Theses

Food insecurity is a condition of insufficient access to quality nutritious food; it is often rooted in shocks that interrupt the food production/distribution system in an area. Amidst the capabilities of Nigeria's agricultural system, the number of households across Nigeria experiencing food shortages has increased rapidly. The main reason for this increase were price shocks. This incident highlighted a huge vulnerability in Nigeria's food system, the vulnerability to price shocks. Incidences such as poverty and conflicts magnify the frequency of food insecurity. The ability to reduce vulnerabilities while addressing existing issues in food production and supply depends on a stable …

Habitat And Conservation Suitability Assessment For Shrubland Birds In Monroe County, New York, Rachel Allen

Theses

Shrublands and successional ecosystems are of special interest to land managers and conservation groups because to be maintained, they must be disturbed periodically. Shrubland birds rely on variation in the landscape, regular disturbance, and ephemeral patches of shrubs for breeding, foraging, and nesting. Many of these avian species are in decline, so monitoring and mapping shrublands is necessary for future conservation and management strategies (DeGraaf & Yamasaki, 2003; Howard et al., 2015; Litvaitis, 2003). Large proportions of shrubland bird populations rely on shrublands in the northeast states for breeding habitat, and the identification and land use monitoring of these regions …

Biorefinery Pathways For Institutional Food Waste, Shwe Sin Win

Theses

Every day, enormous quantities of nutritious food are wasted in landfills across the globe. Agriculture and food production use intensive amounts of water, chemicals, and land, rendering food waste as a major environmental and economic concern. New York State is currently considering legislation that would ban landfill disposal of food waste produced by large institutional generators, such as universities, hospitals, sports venues, restaurants, grocery stores, etc. Institutions have concentrated populations which generate predictable volumes of food waste and waste cooking oil. At the same time, these populations need heat, electricity, vehicle fuel, and soap. Developing a biorefinery system offers great …

Research On A Future Senior Housing Model In Wuhan, China, Fangyuan Shi

Theses

Recently in China, seniors’ health and living conditions after retirement have become the focus of increasing political and social concerns. Due to fertility policies in China since the 1980s, improvements in living conditions have led to longer average lifespan, increasing demand in the country’s senior housing market. This research explores the future development of senior housing for this and the next generation, the evolution of needs after retirement, and possible future solutions for providing an up-to-date senior housing community in Wuhan, China. Through documentary analysis of the current conditions as well as the needs and social concerns of seniors, case …

Additives Abyss, I-Tang Wu

Theses

Through the news, publications and journals about misuse of food additives in Taiwan, food additives are gradually recognized by the public. However, many people were neither aware of the additives nor able to understand the importance of nutrition usage until some negative food safety issues broke out. This has a lot to do with the lack of knowledge about additives among Taiwanese. People are seldom suspicious of the unnatural taste, even get familiar with it. Therefore, food companies replace the natural ones with food additives not only to lower costs and make food attractive, but also to fulfill customers’ need …

Enhancing Dining Experiences Through Emotional Tableware Design, Yueyue Zhang

Theses

Positive dining experiences can improve both physical and psychological health. Eating with people and eating slowly can facilitate one’s experience and behavior during the process, owing to the unexpected information from their senses and the surrounding environment. Tableware is a very important bridge between people and food. People get food, share food, and serve food while dining. Therefore, the tableware based on emotional design can to a certain extent affect people's dining behavior and dining experience. This paper firstly introduces the reasons why people are getting hard to get a positive dining experience, and the importance of dining experiences. Then, …

Exploring The School Nurse's Perception Of Caring For Students With Severe Allergies, Alyson Kreitzman

Theses

The role of the school nurse continually evolves, with an increase in students who are medically fragile, have disabilities and those diagnosed with both acute and chronic illnesses. A major challenge for the school nurse is the number of students with severe allergies. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates food allergies in children have increased by 50% in the past decade. These allergies can be life threatening and effect one in thirteen children under the age of eighteen, which means potentially two students in each classroom in the U.S. has a severe allergy. School nurses are responsible for …

Enhancement Of Vegetative Growth And Nutrient Concentration Of Date Palm After Inoculation With An Isolate From Uae Of The Arbuscular Mycorrhizal Fungus Rhizoglomus Intraradices, Khuloud Nasser Mohammed Al Kayyoomi

Theses

The date palm (Phoenix dactylifera) is considered the main agricultural crop in many dry regions of the world, including the United Arab Emirates (UAE). It has been demonstrated that the date palm forms a beneficial symbiotic association with arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi. AM fungi are known to improve plant growth, increase nutrient uptake and assist plant growth under biotic and abiotic stress conditions. The main aim of the present study was to evaluate the efficiency at which an isolate of the AM fungus Rhizoglomus intraradices improves the vegetative growth and nutrient content of two date palm varieties in …

Functionality Assessment Of The Newly Discovered Arbuscular Mycorrhizal (Am) Fungus From Uae, Dominikia Emiratia, Laila Ahmed Al Dhaheri

Theses

Arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungal species form symbiotic associations with the vast majority of terrestrial plants. These associations help plants to improve their water and nutrient uptake. In return, plants provide a suitable habitat for the fungi to flourish. From across the globe, approximately 300 AM fungal species have been described to date. Most recently, Dominikia emirate from UAE joined the list of known AM fungal species. It was found in Sweyhan, Abu Dhabi, associated with several plants within two different types of farming systems, namely organic and conventional. The discovery of the new species provides an opportunity for applied and …

Investigating Green Inhibitors For Acidic Corrosion Of Carbon Steel, Osama Abu-Alyosr Kamal Ibrahim

Theses

This study is intended to investigate Khalas palm date pits extract as a green corrosion inhibitor alternative to commercial inhibitors. Inhibition efficiency of the obtained extract was investigated on carbon steel grade S355JR immersed in different corrosive mediums of 2 molarity hydrochloric acid (������) solution and seawater solution. Along with other ingredients in palm date pits, Polyphenolic compounds have a significant anti-oxidation property and were found effective in reducing corrosion rate.

Due to its common industrial applications, Carbon steel was used in this investigation as the corroding medium, while 2M ������ and seawater solutions were used separately as the corrosive …

Production Of Anti-Corrosion Materials From Uae Date Palm Waste, Nour Shehadeh Abdelrahman

Theses

Palm tree serves as the main source of biomass in the Gulf countries. The United Arab Emirates (UAE) alone is blessed with more than 40 million date palm trees, which generate a huge amount of waste annually. The main objective of this thesis is to examine the ability to produce a corrosion inhibitor from a date palm tree, waste, starting by extracting lignin from different parts of the date palm tree and characterizing the extracted lignin, converting lignin to sodium lignosulfonate, while selecting the optimum condition for the conversion reaction and characterizing the prepared lignosulfonate. Finally, the corrosion efficiency for …

Family Conversation Kit, Yingyi Mo

Theses

Deep, bidirectional family conversations are where family members express, listen to and understand each other’s inner thoughts with an open mindset. Such conversations can strengthen the comprehension and connection among family members, pass down cultural and family heritage further, and improve the cohesion and well-being of families and society. However, deep, bidirectional conversations are often neglected, especially in Chinese culture.

Such a lack is indiscernible to many people because they have been so used to hiding inner thoughts from their families that they find nothing wrong with it. Some are aware of the shortage, while the embarrassment comes right after …

Feasibility Of Integrating Microfluidics Into Point-Of-Care Bio-Diagnostics, Swetha Manoharan

Theses

Potassium in the body needs to be maintained in proper levels for the normal functioning of heart and kidneys. The aim of this work is to develop a simple technique to measure the concentration of Potassium present in a bodily fluid sample, which can be used to assess the health condition of extremely sick patients, especially when the patient's condition needs to be diagnosed and results needs to be obtained rapidly under Point-of-Care settings. Microfluidics is one of the platforms used in bio-diagnostics because of several advantages such as low sample volume requirement and integration into high-throughput screening. In this …

Consumer Considerations Of Local Value-Added Dairy Products In North Carolina's Triangle, Gabriel Adjei Agyekum

Theses

The global and domestic dairy markets promise exciting opportunities for companies willing to adapt to a continuously evolving consumer market. However, local dairy farmers face a myriad of challenges as they navigate low milk prices, shrinking margins, increasing production cost, and a rising demand for plant-based varieties of milk, yogurt, cheese and other dairy-based foods. The goal of this research was to investigate consumer behavior towards value-added local dairy products in North Carolina’s Triangle cities of Raleigh, Durham, and Chapel Hill. Data were used from an overarching project with collected data from food consumers in the triangle tri-city area using …

Fat Uptake Reduction In Deep-Fried Chicken Breast, Lovie G. Matthews

Theses

Obesity is the deposit of excessive adipose tissue on the body due to the overconsumption of nutritionally inadequate foods. The fat in the deep-fat fried chicken is derived from the oil absorption during frying. High consumption of deep-fat fried foods may lead to cardiovascular diseases and obesity. The main objectives of this experiment were to reduce the fat uptake in deep-fat fried chicken breast by developing an edible coating made of chicken breast protein isolates (CPI) as well as replace the corn starch in batter with sweet potato starch to further examine the quality attributes of the battering systems. In …

Effects Of International Trade On Food Security Of Selected Low Income And Low-Middle Income Economies, Rose Anapoka Anaabah

Theses

Food security has been a challenge for most people all over the world, especially among people living in low income countries. Food security is considered a complex sustainable development issue and is linked to health through malnutrition due to poverty. Food security became a major challenge following the sharp increase in global food prices during the last decade. Several factors contribute to food security. One factor is international trade which plays a major role in shaping the economy in most countries of the world. Access to food which is supposed to be an entitlement, or a basic right can be …

Farm Financial Analysis For Small-Scale, Organic Mixed Vegetable Operation, Janet Ayobami Osawere

Theses

The small farmers in the United States face challenges from market uncertainties and climate variations. Many small farmers do not keep consistent financial records, thus making it difficult to analyze their profitability and make decisions in planning. This research is to use a real farm production stimulation from Goldsboro, North Carolina, to collect data from 2017 to 2018 for farm financial analysis that mimics a small-scale certified organic mixed vegetable production. The goal is to use the stimulating information from Goldsboro, North Carolina to help small-scale organic mixed vegetable farmers to identify the main strengths and weaknesses of farm operation; …

Mind Over Matter : Stimulant Adhd Medication Use And Bone Mineral Density In College-Aged Subjects ; Is There A Trade-Off?, Sims Kirkland Lawson

Theses

Literature review showed lowered bone mineral density (BMD) among methamphetamine users and in mice that were given methylphenidate. No human clinical studies have been carried out, to date, to investigate whether there is a correlation between use of psychostimulants prescribed for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) (in this case methylphenidate and amphetamines) and lowered BMD in young adult aged humans. This study observed 53 human subjects, age 19-27 years (average age 21 years); 25 experimental, psychostimulant-prescribed ADHD patients, and 28 healthy control subjects. Each subject was given dual x-ray absorptiometer (DXA) scans of femur, hip area, lumbar spine, and whole-body …

Development Of An Environmental Dna Assay For Detection And Monitoring Of The Troglobitic Crayfishes Cambarus Speleocoopi And Cambarus Laconensis, Spencer Boyd

Theses

Cave-dwelling species live in habitats that are hard to access and study. They often are small, elusive to capture, and possess morphological characters that make them difficult to identify without collection and dissection. Environmental DNA (eDNA) offers a nondestructive, noninvasive, and potentially cost-effective way to monitor and detect these species. I investigated the use of eDNA to detect two troglobitic crayfishes Cambarus speleocoopi in Marshall County and Cambarus laconensis in Morgan County, Alabama. I developed and tested in silico and in vivo primer-probe quantitative PCR assays for both species, then screened water samples collected from caves and springs in northern …