Digital Commons Network^™

An Exploration Of Rhythm Perception In African Penguins (Spheniscus Demersus), Irene A. Fobe

Theses

Rhythmic properties in penguin vocalizations may be unique to individuals. Rhythm perception is a cognitive ability previously thought to be exclusive to vocal-learning species who have the neurological complexities required to mimic conspecific and heterospecific vocalizations. Discovering rhythm perception in penguins would provide insight on penguins’ ability to recognize kin using auditory cues, and discount theories constraining rhythm perception to vocal-learning animals. The goal of this study was to learn if African penguins (Spheniscus demersus) could perceive changes in rhythm using a habituation-dishabituation paradigm. Subjects were 32-38 African penguins housed at the Seneca Park Zoo in Rochester, NY. Penguins were …

Exploring Gria2 Sequence Variations Using Virtual Reality, Jimmy Fan Zhang

Theses

The effective visualization and presentation of biological data is of critical importance to research scientists. The increasing rate at which experiments generate data has only exacerbated the problem. While bioinformatics datasets continue to increase in size and complexity, the shift to adopt new user interface (UI) paradigms has historically lagged. Consequently, a major bottleneck for analysis of next-generation sequencing data is the continued use of UIs primarily inspired from the 1990’s through the early 2000’s. This paper presents the novel use of virtual reality (VR) as a medium for visualizing genomic, transcriptomic and proteomic data. Using the Gria2 (GluR2 or …

Efficient Template-Based Nanomanufacturing Of Carbon Nanotube Arrays For Cell Applications, Adeel Ahmed

Theses

Carbon nanotube arrays have been found to be highly effective at carrying out intracellular delivery of cargo at high efficiencies while ensuring cell viability. Template based chemical vapor deposition is a commonly used process to fabricate these arrays. However, current etching methods used to expose carbon nanotubes from templates are expensive and time consuming. The high cost and time-consuming processes currently required to fabricate such arrays are factors which limit the commercialization of this technology and inhibit scope for larger research programs. In this thesis, alternative nanofabrication methods were explored with the aim of making the fabrication of CNT arrays …

Comparative Phytochemical Screening And Antioxidant Activities Of Calligonum Comosum And Calligonum Crjnitum, Khalfan Mohamed Abdulla Ai Naqbi

Theses

Medicinal plants are vital source of present day prescription and the majority of the recommended modern medications contain their subsidiaries. Calligonum comosum and Calligonum crinitum are perennial shrub plants growing in the United Arab Emirates, and are being utilized as a part of traditional medicinal system of UAE. The aims of proposed study were to evaluate and compare the phytochemical and antioxidant properties of these two plants. The extraction and fractionation were conducted by using petroleum ether, chloroform, ethyl acetate, acetone and methanol. The extracts were tested for their antioxidant activity. Phytochemical studies with total phenolics and flavonoid contents were …

The Effect Of Microstructure On Mechanical Properties Of Powder-Based Materials For 3-D Printing, Yuan Tian

Theses

The Thesis simulates the microstructure of powder-based materials for the Powder-bed Fusion 3D printing processes. The microstructure is created with the Random Ballistic Deposition methodology, which simulates the sedimentation of spherical particles under the influence of an external field. For the bulk of particles of the same size, the packing fraction depends on the inter-particle forces among them. In the Thesis, different contact areas between particles are created to simulate the sintering effects. The specimens of simulated microstructures of different contact areas are produced with a 3D stereolithographic printer. The printed specimens are then subjected to testing for their differences …

A Dataset Of Gaze Behavior In Vr Faithful To Natural Statistics, Brendan John

Theses

Eye tracking technology is advancing swiftly and many areas of research have begun taking advantage of this. Existing eye trackers project gaze onto a 2D plane, whether it be the display of a head mounted virtual reality (VR) helmet or an image of a real life scene the user is in. This allows us to easily analyze what a viewer is looking at, but limits classification of gaze behaviors from this type of signal. Instead, a system that takes into account head movements within the same space as gaze velocity allows researchers to classify more advanced gaze behaviors such as …

Summer Habitat Use By A Mammal Community Of An Oak-Dominated Ecosystem In The Central Hardwood Region, Brent Steven Pease

Theses

In the greater Central Hardwood Region, advance regeneration of oak (Quercus spp.) and hickory (Carya spp.) has been in decline for several decades. Facilitated in part by an abrupt change in disturbance regime, coupled with an increase in herbivore density, the existing mid-successional, mast-producing species are being outcompeted by late-successional, mesophytic species. Oak-hickory forests provide keystone resources for a diverse forest wildlife community, and a decline in its dominance will likely impact habitat use and occupancy patterns in the mammal community, but to what extent is unclear. During May-August 2015-2016, I deployed 150 remotely-triggered camera traps in Trail of Tears …

Approximation Of Continuously Distributed Delay Differential Equations, Roshini Samanthi Gallage

Theses

We establish a theorem on the approximation of the solutions of delay differential equations with continuously distributed delay with solutions of delay differential equations with discrete delays. We present numerical simulations of the trajectories of discrete delay differential equations and the dependence of their behavior for various delay amounts. We further simulate continuously distributed delays by considering discrete approximation of the continuous distribution.

The Effects Of Frondoside A In Acute Leukemia, Fatma Hussain Sajwani

Theses

Among hematological malignancies, acute leukemia is the major cause of mortality. Despite improvement of survival with current chemotherapies, some patients still diefrom the disease or the treatment side effects. Thus, new therapeutic agents are needed. Anti-cancer drugs derived from natural products are of interest. Frondoside A is a triterpenoid glycoside form the sea cucumber, Cucumaria frondosa that has shown potent antitumor effects in various cancers. Previous studies in acute leukemia are limited. The current study investigated the effects of frondoside a in acute leukemia cell lines alone and in combination with drugs currently used for this malignancy. This study is …

Effects Of Olfactory Enrichments On African Cheetahs (Acinonyx Jubatus), Marcus Chas Abston

Theses

AN ABSTRACT OF THE THESIS OF MARCUS C. ABSTON, for the Master of Science degree in ZOOLOGY, presented on 18 April 2017, at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. TITLE: EFFECTS OF OLFACTORY ENRICHMENT ON AFRICAN CHEETAHS (ACINONYX JUBATUS) MAJOR PROFESSOR: Dr. Carey Krajewski Environmental enrichment has been an essential part of felid husbandry in zoos, serving to reduce both physiological and psychological stress. Olfactory enrichment is one of many interventions used to prevent stereotypic behavior caused by stress in felids. However, little research has been done on this practice. The purpose of this study was to compare behavioral responses of four …

Quantifying The Rates And Spatial Distribution Of Recent Sedimentation Within The Hydrologically Connected Floodplains Of The Middle Mississippi River, Usa, Using Digital Elevation Models And Dendrogeomorphology, Julia Kay Ryherd

Theses

The construction of levees along the Mississippi River [MR], beginning in the mid-to-late nineteenth century, have isolated the river along many segments from its floodplain. Sediment from the river is currently deposited in the hydrologically connected floodplain [HCF], the area between the channel margin at low water and the levees. Researchers have studied the amount and rates of sediment deposition along the Upper and Lower Mississippi River segments from the headwaters to Pool 22 and from the Ohio River to the delta; however, no such assessments have been undertaken along the Middle Mississippi River [MMR]. This study attempts to fill …

The Assessment And Etiology Of Novelty Seeking And Rule-Breaking In Young Children, Emma Brittany Diaz

Theses

This study explored the stability and heritability of novelty seeking, defiance, and rule-breaking in early childhood using a twin sample. Parent reports of novelty seeking were assessed at ages 3 and 4, parent reports of rule-breaking were assessed at ages 5 and follow-up (6-16), and observer reports of defiance were assessed at age 5. Results showed that novelty seeking increased between ages 3 and 4, and rule-breaking remained stable from age 5 to follow-up (6-16). All constructs demonstrated significant heritability. Finally, neither novelty seeking nor defiance predicted 5-year-old rule-breaking. Defiance was the only construct that significantly predicted follow-up rule-breaking. Defiance …

Public Artifacts, Empirical Vulnerability And Descriptive Metaphysics, Blake Davenport

Theses

Herein I argue that Amie Thomasson’s account of public artifacts is empirically vulnerable. I first identify the descriptive claims that feature in Thomasson’s argument and then outline an experimental framework in which the accuracy of those claims can be evaluated. I conclude with some brief remarks on the possible implications of my approach for Thomasson’s account, and some thoughts on whether an experimental approach to evaluating projects in descriptive metaphysics might be valuable more broadly.

An Exploration Of Commercial Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (Uavs) Through Life Cycle Assessments, Briana Neuberger

Theses

The objective of this study is to analyze the potential for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) to displace current technology and look at how they impact the environment through a delivery transportation model. It is meant to encompass an ecological perspective of producing and using UAVs as well as understand the environmental consequences that accompany it. This paper presents a new way of looking at the uses of UAVs and attempts to apply typical life cycle assessment (LCA) methods to this technology. This research is intended to be used as an initial environmental baseline of drone technology and as a comparative …

Androgyny, Yu-Chi Chien

Theses

Cognition is a mental activity during which information is received through perception and judgment. From birth people gradually construct their own cognitive understanding of the world. Predecessors often transmit their own past experiences to others in order to efficiently build up the values that they think are correct. For constructing cognition easily and rapidly, predecessors tend to generalize and simplify the information so that others can readily understand and judge, but it is often distorted and doesn’t express the full meaning inside.

People have the ability to explore their own answer for everything. However, after the process of simplifying information …

Parts: One Through Three, Julia Manson

Theses

Through the use of wearable objects, the topic of human skin is explored in its various states to give audiences a different outlook on beauty in society and the ways skin can map the human experience. Various materials and techniques were used to create jewelry and wearable sculptures to facilitate this discussion. Metal, silicone rubber, plastics, and fibers were used to explore this topic of our perceptions of ourselves and what our appearances project onto the world. Three different approaches were used to talk about skin and scarring. First, silicone rubber and copper and silver wire frames were utilized to …

The Evolution Of Fear Ecology: A Fruit Fly (Drosophila Melanogaster) Perspective, Itachi Mills

Theses

Several mechanisms underlie how evolutionary lineages respond to predation pressures or predation risk. Further mechanisms link evolutionary predation responses to how animals forage, or find mates. However, gaps remain in our understanding about how predation and foraging interact in an evolutionary context.

In my first chapter, I elaborate on how predation and foraging relate in to one another in ecological, evolutionary and behavioral contexts. I start out with an overview of fear ecology. Then, I outline how trade-offs influence the evolution of morphological, chemical and behavioral responses to predation. I further elaborate on how these trade-offs influence reproduction. Finally, I …

Cell Dynamics In Three-Dimensional (3d) Culture Environments, Rong Fan

Theses

A three-dimensional (3D) cell culture system provides an effective platform to study cell dynamics in in vivo-mimicking conditions and thus plays an important role in understanding cell biology, organ function, and disease model. This dissertation investigates cell dynamics in a variety of 3D environments including solid and liquid matrix. We study cell dynamics in 3D hydrogel microparticles and show that cells exhibit significant differences with that from 2D monolayer culture, including cell cycle, survival, morphology and the sensitivity to inflammation. We further develop a 3D printed cell-laden hybrid hydrogel construct to investigate colon cancer cell dynamics in physiologically relevant bowel …

Degradation Of Cyclic Ethers By Microorganisms Isolated From Contaminated Groundwater, Rowan Thompson

Theses

Groundwater contamination is an extremely important topic in environmental science. Ex-situ removal of contaminants is costly and largely ineffective on contaminants that have high vapor pressures and readily mix with water. Bioremediation or bio-augmentation are attractive alternative ways to remediate a site, as they may require less work and be more cost-effective.

Groundwater samples from a superfund site contaminated with chlorinated compounds and other volatile organic compounds. Samples were enriched to select for organisms capable of degrading cyclic ethers, specifically tetrahydrofuran and 1,4-dioxane. The isolates were tested for their degradation capacity and to determine if they were impacted by the …

Rational Drug Design Directed At Blocking The Initial Signaling Events In Lipopolysaccharide-Induced Sepsis., Christopher A. Tipton

Theses

Systemic Inflammatory Response Syndrome (SIRS) is classified as an immune system response to an infectious state. If left untreated, SIRS leads to sepsis, septic shock, end-organ dysfunction, and death. As a patient progresses through these stages, associations of acute respiratory distress, disseminated intravascular coagulation, and acute renal failure persist, resulting in millions of deaths annually. Lipopolysaccharide (LPS), a bacterial endotoxin, is released into the blood stream, triggering SIRS. LPS is found in the outer cell-wall of Gram-negative bacteria and is responsible for initiation of a devastating cytokine storm. One of the regions of LPS, lipid A, is a polyacylated glucosamine …

Synthesis Of Polyproline Spacers Between Nir Dye Pairs For Fret To Enhance Photoacoustic Imaging, Nisha Geng

Theses

With the goal of enhancing the emission of ultra-sound (US) waves in photoacoustic imaging (PAI) for the detection of cancer we discovered an effective system for Förster Resonance Energy Transfer (FRET) composed of a near infrared fluorescent (NIRF) dye and a NIR quencher (NIRQ) dye separated by a polyproline peptide spacer. In PAI, a newly developed imaging technique, the signal is generated by excitation of cells using pulsed infrared lasers and measurement of resulting US waves using detectors. NIRF dyes can increase the sensitivity of PAI signal, particularly when used in targeted molecular imaging agents (TMIAs). However, most of the …

Hydrology, Nutrient Availability, And Herbivory Interacting To Control Ecosystem Functions And Services In Created Emergent Freshwater Wetlands, Kimberly A. Lodge

Theses

The loss of natural wetlands to anthropogenic development has warranted the creation of wetlands to mitigate the reduction of valuable ecosystem functions and services. However, the complex interactions between the main drivers of wetland community structure – hydrology, nutrient availability and herbivory – makes creation of fully functional wetland replacements challenging. In this study, we examined the interactions among these drivers, and their impacts on plant diversity and nitrogen removal in two created wetlands with different land use histories: A1N (previous gravel depository) and A3 (previous cattle pasture). We established paired plots protected from – and open to – large …

Deep Liquid State Machines With Neural Plasticity And On-Device Learning, Nicholas M. Soures

Theses

The Liquid State Machine (LSM) is a recurrent spiking neural network designed for efficient processing of spatio-temporal streams of information. LSMs have several inbuilt features such as robustness, fast training and inference speed, generalizability, continual learning (no catastrophic forgetting), and energy efficiency. These features make LSM’s an ideal network for deploying intelligence on-device.

In general, single LSMs are unable to solve complex real-world tasks. Recent literature has shown emergence of hierarchical architectures to support temporal information processing over different time scales. However, these approaches do not typically investigate the optimum topology for communication between layers in the hierarchical network, or …

Improving The Design And Application Of Insulator-Based Dielectrophoretic Devices For The Assessment Of Complex Mixtures, Mario A. Saucedo-Espinosa

Theses

Dielectrophoresis (DEP) is an electrokinetic (EK) transport mechanism that exploits polarization effects when particles are exposed to a non-uniform electric field. This dissertation focused on the development of high-performance insulator-based DEP (iDEP) devices. A detailed analysis of the spatial forces that contribute to particle movement in an iDEP device is provided. In particular, this analysis shows how particle size and shape affects the regions where particles are likely to be retained due to dielectrophoretic trapping. The performance of these trapping regions was optimized using a systematic approach that integrates the geometrical parameters of the array of insulating structures. Devices that …

Applying Data Analytics To Improve Multi-Asset Portfolio Performance, Amrith Akula

Theses

The number of casual investors allocating funds into financial exchanges has surged due to the increased availability of trading accounts on multiple platforms. These investors quite often invest only in one type of asset, stocks. Stocks are known to experience sudden market shifts and extreme volatility based on factors that the investors may not be able to control. Existing applications of data mining stocks perform well, but if the entire stock market performs poorly, investors can face severe losses. This study utilized a data mining tool that evaluates two other classes of investments: the commodities market and the currency exchange …

Profiling The Neurovascular Cell Interactions In Alcohol Exposure And Hiv-1 Infection, Agnieszka Agas

Theses

Alcohol use is known to exacerbate the progression of human immunodeficiency virus associated acquired immunodeficiency syndrome or HIV/AIDS in the brain, known as the NeuroAIDS. The mechanisms of this accelerated progression are still poorly understood. The purpose of my thesis is to review the parameters contributing to the co-morbid effects of alcohol in the progression of NeuroAIDS. The first aim will evaluate the exacerbating effects of alcohol on HIV-1 transmission, infection, and the role of metabolic energy imbalance during NeuroAIDS progression, which will enable me to formulate the possible mechanism for NeuroAIDS progression. The second aim will help me establish …

High Performance Lattice Boltzmann Method Yield-Stress Calculations Based On Intravital Images Of Clot Formation In Live Mice, Vishnu Deep Chandran

Theses

Thrombo-embolic infarction is the major cause of mortality and morbidity in the United States, causing over 1 million strokes, heart attacks and other life-threatening thrombotic events each year in the United States. Conversely, deficiencies in these processes result in severe bleeding risks. The ability to access hydrodynamics stresses at which thrombus structure is likely to embolize can provide insight into the thrombogenesis process. Interestingly, the viscoelastic behavior exhibited by the thrombus resembles that of a Bingham fluid - a material that behaves as a rigid body at low stresses but flows as a viscous fluid when the stress exceeds critical …

Corrosion Studies Of Stainless Steel Blades, Dhruv S. Kothari

Theses

Corrosion is a subject of interest to interdisciplinary research communities that includes fields of materials science, chemistry, physics, metallurgy and chemical engineering. In order to understand the mechanisms of corrosion and the function of corrosion inhibitors, the reactions at the interfaces between the corrosive electrolyte and a steel surface, particularly at the initial stages of the corrosion process, need to be described. Naturally, these reactions are strongly affected by the nature and properties of the steel surfaces. It is however seen that the majority of recent corrosion and corrosion-inhibition investigations are limited to electrochemical testing, with ex situ analysis of …

Smart Polymeric Temperature Sensors – For Biological Systems, Greenee Anilkumar Sinha

Theses

The damaged brain is vulnerable to increase in brain temperature after a severe head injury. Continuous monitoring of intracranial temperature depicts functionality essential to the treatment of brain injury Many innovations have been made in the biomedical industry relying on electronic implants in treating condition such as traumatic brain injury (TBI) or other cerebral diseases. Hence, a methodical and reliable way to measure the temperature is crucial to assess the patient’s situation. In this investigation, an analysis of various approaches to detect the change in the temperature due to resistance, current-voltage characteristics with respect to time has been evaluated. Also, …

Experimental Study Of Bubble Rupture During Shock-Fluid Interaction, Subhalakshmi Chandrasekaran

Theses

Head injuries are associated with exposure to high energy explosive detonation. There are four distinct types of blast induced neurotrauma (BINT): 1) these caused by supersonic shock waves propagating in the atmosphere (primary), 2) high velocity impact of shrapnel and debris (secondary) 3) acceleration and deceleration of the body and collision with the solid objects in the field (tertiary) and 4) exposure to high temperature and toxic gases (quaternary). One of the mechanisms implicated in non-impact primary blast-induced traumatic brain injury (bTBI) is cavitation. It is hypothesized that cavitation can occur in the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) layer, brain interstitial fluid, …