Digital Commons Network^™

Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (Adhd) And Gender Differences, Christina A. Carducci

Theses

Few studies investigate gender differences concerning Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) (Hinshaw, 2002). Further, studies that examine self-report ratings of ADHD in females are lacking. Self-reports are crucial to identifying ADHD in females who have been found to have more internalizing symptoms of ADHD (Quinn, 2005). Current models suggest that executive function, rather than attention, is the core deficit of ADHD and that it may serve as a neurobehavioral domain that differentiates individuals with ADHD based on subtype and gender (Wodka et al., 2008). This study examined gender differences on the Behavior Rating Inventory of Executive Functioning- Adult Version (BRIEF-A) …

The Seven Prerequisites For Life, Jon Karafin

Theses

The Seven Prerequisites for Life is a biological sculpture that exhibits all of the main functions of a natural organism: growth, evolution, metabolism, response, reproduction, order, and regulation. Exhibited in Rochester, New York in December 2007, this sculpture has attained recognition in local news media and the internationally syndicated Ripley's Believe It or Not for its innovation in the field of art-science integration. The following thesis explores my artistic motivations behind this endeavor, traversing from early fascination with magic through more mature investigations into the relationship between the fine arts, sciences, and mathematics. Intertwined with my enduring attraction to photography …

An Examination Of Scent-Marking, Individual Odors, And Individual Discrimination In The Raccoon (Procyon Lotor)., Laura Alice Kent

Theses

This study had three objectives: 1) to characterize the patterns of scent-marking in captive raccoons; 2) to determine if wild-trapped raccoons can discriminate individual differences in the odors of urine, feces or anal sac secretions; 3) to analyze the variation in chemical composition of urine samples among individuals. I observed five raccoons living in a semi-natural enclosure at the Henry Doorly Zoo in Omaha, Nebraska and recorded all behaviors related to scent-marking. For the studies on individual differences and discrimination through odors, I used the familiarization-discrimination technique with raccoons housed in conditions that approximated their natural environment. In the chemical …

Computer 30 Models Of Pulmonary Epithelium And Endothelium Cross Sections And Alveoli Across A Septum, Valerie Henry

Theses

The first portion of the project deals with creating three-dimensional computer generated models for the use in lung/particle studies. The models are to be proportional, to scale, and representative of the real structures. The models were created using Autodesk Maya 2008. The structures created are cross-sections of an alveolar epithelium and a capillary endothelium as they are found on either side of the respiratory basement membrane, and two alveoli with the septa! wall between. The models of the cellular cross-section include the cytoskeletal components, vesicles, and cellular membrane. The filaments of the cytoskeleton (microfilament, intermediate filament, microtubule) have been made …

Gpu-Based Implementation Of Real-Time System For Spiking Neural Networks, Dmitri Yudanov

Theses

Real-time simulations of biological neural networks (BNNs) provide a natural platform for applications in a variety of fields: data classification and pattern recognition, prediction and estimation, signal processing, control and robotics, prosthetics, neurological and neuroscientific modeling. BNNs possess inherently parallel architecture and operate in continuous signal domain. Spiking neural networks (SNNs) are type of BNNs with reduced signal dynamic range: communication between neurons occurs by means of time-stamped events (spikes). SNNs allow reduction of algorithmic complexity and communication data size at a price of little loss in accuracy. Simulation of SNNs using traditional sequential computer architectures results in significant time …

Determination Of 3-Dimensional Deformations Of The Alveolar Sac During Simulated Breathing, Joseph M. Ferrara

Theses

Mechanical properties of the parenchyma of the lung are currently unknown and difficult to quantify. Creating a computer model with valid property values will allow researchers to further investigate particle mixing in the lung during inhalation and exhalation. One challenge with modeling the material of the lung is the intricate geometry of the alveolar sac. Researchers are currently trying to model particle deposition within the lung using computational fluid dynamics. However, the mechanical properties of alveolar sac structure are currently undetermined. Due to the complexity of the physical structure of an alveolar sac, it has been a challenge to model …

Recognition Of Human Activities And Expressions In Video Sequences Using Shape Context Descriptor, Natasha Prashant Kholgade

Theses

The recognition of objects and classes of objects is of importance in the field of computer vision due to its applicability in areas such as video surveillance, medical imaging and retrieval of images and videos from large databases on the Internet. Effective recognition of object classes is still a challenge in vision; hence, there is much interest to improve the rate of recognition in order to keep up with the rising demands of the fields where these techniques are being applied. This thesis investigates the recognition of activities and expressions in video sequences using a new descriptor called the spatiotemporal …

Material Selection For The Actuator Design For A Biomimetic Rolling Robot Conducive To Miniaturization, Zachary S. Dotson

Theses

The purpose of this thesis was to research, select, and test an actuator mechanism for ultimate use on a centimeter scale biomimetic rolling robot. The design of the actuator will allow a rolling motion that closely mimics cellular locomotion in addition to providing a novel motion for other applications. The basis of the design has been completed through previous mechanical design research. The existing robotic mechanism consists of a larger scale spherical body with legs which controllably extend and contract, yielding a trajectory which results in a rolling motion of the body. The previous research also derived a mathematical model …

Investigation Of Atmospheric Microplasma Jet For Nanofabrication, Konstantin Yurchenko

Theses

The last decade has seen an immense amount of research exploring advanced nanofabrication techniques. Many efforts on this front have moved closer to realization of industrially viable nanofabrication, i.e. nanomanufacturing. Plasma-assisted processes have proven to be particularly suitable for nanofabrication due to a non-equilibrium condition that offers high concentration of chemically reactive species at low gas temperatures. Recently, cost-effective atmospheric plasma technologies have been a subject of intense research. The possibility of producing plasma environments at atmospheric pressure similar to those found at low-pressure offer additional advantages for industrial implementation of nanofabrication processes and surface treatment. Atmospheric pressure equates to …

Experimental Investigation Of Mixing Time In A Stirred, Torispherical-Bottomed Tank Equipped With A Retreat-Blade Impeller, Nonjaros Chomcharn

Theses

Glass-lined reactors are typically used in the pharmaceutical and specialty chemicals industries because of their material compatibility with most reactants and their cleanability. These reactors are typically equipped with a retreat-blade impeller placed close to the bottom of the tank a single baffle mounted from the top. The mixing performance of such reactors has not received significant attention in the literature, despite their ubiquitous presence in the pharmaceutical industry. In particular, mixing time, i.e., the time required by the system to achieve a predefined level of homogeneity, has not been studied to any significant degree.

In this work, the mixing …

Reliability Of Resting Brain Networks Using Fmri, Suril Rajeshkumar Gohel

Theses

Resting state FMRI studies on human subjects are primarily focused on elaborating effects of resting state brain networks on task induced paradigm and to check consistency of these networks between different groups of populations. Recent studies have shown consistency of RSFC networks within same subjects with intra-site and intra-session variation.

The primary objective of this study was to check consistency of resting state networks between sites and between different groups of people in spite of change in scanning parameters and population. A total of 437 subjects resting state FMRI data from six different sites were collected varying in age group …

An In Vitro Study To Characterize A New Automated High Throughput Neuronal Stretch Injury System, Nicolae Valerian Hususan

Theses

Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is one of the most prevalent long-term neurological conditions and its overall economic consequences rival that of stroke. Considering the importance of the topic, new models for studying TBI are often designed and created. Based on a model developed by the University of Pennsylvania, NJIT constructed a fully automated version, which injures neuronal cell cultures in uniaxial regime and provides the high experimental yield required in pharmaceutical and neuroscience studies.

In this investigation, a new methodology for culturing primary cortical neurons of rat origin was established. Viable cell cultures developed for the first time in NJIT …

Mixing Performance Of A Novel, Continuous Confined Impinging Jets Mixer Using Competitive Reactions, Han Zheng

Theses

In this work, a novel continuous flow apparatus featuring the impingement of fluid jet streams in the presence of ultrasonic energy provided by an ultrasonic probe was tested using competitive reactions in order to determine its mixing effectiveness. The ultrasonic energy enhances micromixing of the fluid jet streams, which results in an overall mixing effectiveness improvements in different physical and chemical processes.

In the competitive reactions system used here (third Bourne reaction), one stream containing sodium hydroxide was continuously fed to the first impinging jet, while an aqueous solution of hydrochloric acid and ethyl chloroacetate was fed to the second …

Development Of An Experimental System To Determine The Contribution Of Titin And Collagen To Passive Stiffness Of Myocardium, Saurin Bharat Shah

Theses

Diastolic dysfunction is known to be a major factor for congestive heart failure in aged humans and other mammals. The main contributors to increase in the myocardial stiffness, hindering the cardiac mechanics, are alterations in intracellular titin and extracellular collagen matrix. Titin is a giant extensible protein, the third filament of striated muscle after actin and myosin, which provides elasticity to passive sarcomeres. The aim of this study is to develop an efficient experimental system that will prove to be instrumental in comparing the contribution of titin against collagen to the passive stiffness of cardiac muscle extracted from experimental animals …

Characterization Of The Type Vi Secretion Systems Of P. Syringae Pathovars Phaseolicola And Syringae

Theses

Pseudomonas syringae is a bacterial plant pathogen that infects a large variety of agricultural crops. Bacteria colonize leaf surfaces and enter plant mesophyll tissue through wounds or stomata. Once inside, P. syringae can alter plant cell signaling pathways and suppress plant defense responses enabling it to grow in the intercellular space in the mesophyll. P. syringae possesses at least two types of virulence factors that suppress plant defense responses: i) small phytotoxin molecules, and ii) effector proteins that are translocated through specialized secretion systems. Gram-negative bacteria possess at least six types of secretion systems. The P. syringae type II and …

The Meditative State Of Surface, Dan Rioz

Theses

None provided

Anecdotes, James Bellucci

Theses

Anecdotes is a set of illustrations derived from Biblical text, scientific discovery and self-created stories. This body of work questions these texts through the temporal nature of the anecdotal storytelling convention. The images, created through the manipulation of three-dimensional materials such as paper, cardboard, string, and fabrics in constructed sets and photographically represented as a two-dimensional images, question the authenticity of the grand narrative. The images explore scientific discoveries along with religious beliefs revealing my reservations, perceptions, and sentiments toward both. In considering my changing knowledge and beliefs from childhood into adulthood, Anecdotes deconstructs these conflicting narratives into a directorial …

The Experience Of Grey, Andrew Super

Theses

This text is an accompaniment to an endeavor spanning approximately thirteen months in which I used photographic and literary processes to create documents concerning my history. These nearly universal processes were chosen because of their correlative nature. Images are read in a similar fashion to texts and both facilitate discourse. This thesis is an investigation on a personal level about the manner in which experiences are had, documented, and in many ways conditioned. The photographs that amount to the physical portion of this thesis explore the personally anecdotal within the context of generalized methods of documentation. In this work I …

Independent Component Analysis (Ica) Applied To Ultrasound Image Processing And Tissue Characterization, Di Lai

Theses

As a complicated ubiquitous phenomenon encountered in ultrasound imaging, speckle can be treated as either annoying noise that needs to be reduced or the source from which diagnostic information can be extracted to reveal the underlying properties of tissue. In this study, the application of Independent Component Analysis (ICA), a relatively new statistical signal processing tool appeared in recent years, to both the speckle texture analysis and despeckling problems of B-mode ultrasound images was investigated. It is believed that higher order statistics may provide extra information about the speckle texture beyond the information provided by first and second order statistics …

Feasibility Assessment Of A Kalman Filter Approach To Fault Detection And Fault-Tolerance In A Highly Unstable System: The Rit Heart Pump, Erin Gillespie

Theses

The purpose of this project is to assess the feasibility of a Kalman Filter approach for fault detection in a highly unstable system, specifically the heart pump currently under development at RIT. Simulations and experimental work were completed to determine the effects of possible position sensor fault conditions on the system; that information was then used in conjunction with a pair of Kalman filters to create a method of detecting faults and providing fault-tolerant operation. The heart pump system was modeled using Simulink and then the fault diagnosis and tolerance system was added to the model and tested via simulation …

Museum Discovery Rooms Engaging Families Using Learning Theories, Cassandra E. Demski

Theses

No abstract provided.

Genetic Elements Of Microbes: A Comprehensive And Integrated Genomic Database Application, Ashlee Benjamin

Theses

The increasing abundance of genomic data has led to the creation of several databases containing the sequence data, metadata about the sequences and information about the organisms. These data are useful in many areas of biological research. Of the many available databases, few contain a significant amount of genome-associated data. In an effort to create a comprehensive microbial genomes database, the Genetic Elements of Microbes (GEM) database application was created. A K-mer analysis tool was also created and added the GEM application to provide an analysis of sequence composition and potential Lateral Gene Transfer (LGT) identification. The GEM application was …

Annotation Consistency Tool: The Assessment Of Jcvi Microbial Genome Annotations, Rhea I. Sanchez

Theses

BRC-Pathema is one of eight National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) Bioinformatics Resource Centers. It consists of sophisticated, clade-specific Web resources targeting the data and analysis needs of different scientific communities. Among those resources are sophisticated bioinformatics software, a comprehensive library of scientific literature, and manually curated data. Periodical evaluations by the BRC-Central determine Pathema's level of completeness, accuracy, and consistency. The results of these evaluations have revealed the need to develop customized tools for the maintenance of acceptable levels of accuracy and consistency within Pathema's curated databases of annotated microbial genomes. The Annotation Consistency Tool, or ACT, …

Monitoring Reading Fluency Progress With The Use Of Graphs, Emily Lewandowski

Theses

Curriculum-Based Measurement (CBM) is a scientifically based approach used to

collect progress monitoring data, and is often used to monitor reading development.

Graphing a student's reading data over time allows educators to view the student's rate of progress, goal, and interventions. This leads to timely changes to ineffective instructional programs, often resulting in more academic success for students. Graphs can be a communication tool for educators to share progress data with students, parents, and other staff. The current need for educators to monitor student progress has resulted in an increasing need of programs that can be used in the educational …

Feature Selection Of Microarray Data Using Genetic Algorithms And Artificial Neural Networks, Paul Yacci

Theses

Microarrays, which allow for the measurement of thousands of gene expression levels in parallel, have created a wealth of data not previously available to biologists along with new computational challenges. Microarray studies are characterized by a low sample number and a large feature space with many features irrelevant to the problem being studied. This makes feature selection a necessary pre-processing step for many analyses, particularly classification. A Genetic Algorithm -Artificial Neural Network (ANN) wrapper approach is implemented to find the highest scoring set of features for an ANN classifier. Each generation relies on the performance of a set of features …

Evaluating The Effect Of Peer Feedback On The Quality Of Online Discourse, Timothy D. Wells

Theses

This study explores the effect on discussion quality of adding a feedback mechanism that presents users with an aggregate peer rating of the usefulness of the participant's contributions in online, asynchronous discussion. Participants in the study groups were able to specify the degree to which they thought any posted comment was useful to the discussion. Individuals were regularly presented with feedback (aggregated and anonymous) summarizing peers' assessment of the usefulness of their contribution, along with a summary of how the individuals rated their peers. Results indicate that continuous, anonymous, aggregated feedback had no effect on either the students' or the …

Optimal Interpolation Grids For Accurate Numerical Solutions Of Singular Ordinary Differential Equations, Michael Margitus

Theses

Researchers are interested in three types of error: experimental error, truncation error, and interpolation error. This thesis will study the last. Given a differential equation g"(x) = f(x) and a fixed number of interpolation grid points, an optimation problem is formulated to minimize the difference between f(x) and its interpolating function, thus reducing the error between the actual solution and the approximated solution of the ODE. Using the Nelder-Mead Simplex Method, the optimal distribution of grid points that will minimize the error between the solution g and its approximated solution will be found. This technique will then be applied to …

Biomersa: The Biology Media Repository With Semantic Augmentation, Adam Cornwell

Theses

With computers now capable of easily handling all kinds of multimedia files in vast quantity, and with the Internet now well-suited to exchange these files, we are faced with the challenge of organizing this data in such a way so as to make the information most useful and accessible. This holds true as well for media pertaining to the field of biology, where multimedia is particularly useful in education, as well as in research. To help address this, a software system with a Web-based interface has been developed for improving the accuracy and specificity of multimedia searching and browsing by …

Semi-Automated Techniques For The Retrieval Of Dermatological Condition In Color Skin Images, Ranxi Huang

Theses

Dermatologists base the diagnosis of skin disease on the visual assessment of the skin. This fact shows that correct diagnosis is highly dependent on the observer's experience and on his or her visual perception. Moreover, the human vision system lacks accuracy, reproducibility, and quantification in the way it gathers information from an image. So, there is a great need for computer-aided diagnosis. We propose a content-based image retrieval (CBIR) system to aid in the diagnosis of skin disease. First, after examining the skin images, pre-processing will be performed. Second, we examine the visual features for skin disease classified in the …

Imaging Schizophrenia: Data Fusion Approaches To Characterize And Classify, Andrew M. Michael

Theses

Schizophrenia is a complex, chronic and disabling mental disorder that affects about one percent of the adult population. The etiology of schizophrenia remains elusive and to date there are no image based tools to diagnose it. Advancements in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) have enabled researchers to develop less invasive and in vivo techniques, such as structural MRI (sMRI), functional MRI (fMRI) and diffusion tensor imaging (DTI), to construct theories about the neural underpinnings of schizophrenia. With sMRI, fMRI and DTI the distribution of tissues, the functional activity and the brain network are imaged respectively. Subjects with schizophrenia (SZ) and healthy …