Digital Commons Network^™

Models Of Rrna Templated Assembly Of The Nucleolus In The C. Elegans Embryo, Nishant Kodan

Theses

The nucleolus is a large membraneless organelle located in the nucleus of eukaryotic cells. It is a multicomponent structure primarily made of RNA and proteins and serves as the site of ribosome biogenesis. It has been extensively studied as a prototype of a membraneless organelle whose assembly is driven by phase separation, but factors affecting the dynamics of nucleolar assembly are not well understood. Experiments show that the size of the nucleolus scales with the size of the nucleus, which decreases through reductive divisions in the early C. elegans embryo. These observations are consistent with the idea that a finite …

Relationship Between Parents’ Feeding Styles, Nutrition Practices And Risk Of Obesity Among 3-5 Years Old Children In The United Arab Emirates, Reem Mohamed Alkarbi

Theses

Previous studies suggest that parental feeding practices shape preschool eating and physical activity habits, ultimately influencing children's weight status. Despite the high obesity rate in UAE youth, preschoolers’ nutrition habits and their links to parental feeding styles are explored. This study aims to describe parental feeding styles: Emotional (E), Instrumental (I), Prompting and Encouragement (PE), Control Over Eating (COE)), and their associations with nutrition practices, socio-demographic factors, and obesity in UAE preschoolers. Using an online questionnaire, a cross-sectional study surveyed Emirati families with 3-5-year-old children. Data was analyzed using SPSS v.29. 70 preschool Emirati children living in Abu Dhabi participated. …

The Association Between Body Image Satisfaction And Depressive Symptoms Among Young Women In The Uae With Polycystic Ovary Syndrome (Pcos) And Non-Pcos: A Comparative Quantitative Cross-Sectional Study, Shaima Abdrahman Al-Mekhlafi

Theses

Polycystic Ovary Syndrome (PCOS) is one of the most common syndromes affecting women of reproductive age, (Laggari et al., 2009). PCOS not only impacts women's physical health but also their psychological well-being, often leading to depressive symptoms and lower body image satisfaction, Wang et al. (2023). Recent research indicates a growing prevalence of PCOS among women in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Mirza et al. (2023). However, there is a noticeable gap in understanding the psychological effects of PCOS on women in the UAE, likely due to cultural sensitivities. This study aims to investigate the association of depressive symptoms and …

Heat Sink With Fins And Phase Change Material For Cooling Of High-Power Electronic Devices, Farooq Fakher Mahmoud

Theses

Electronics are integral to modern life, present in everything from household appliances to advanced computers. The performance and reliability of these devices are closely tied to their operating temperatures. High-power operations can lead to significant heating, necessitating effective thermal management to enhance functionality and prevent failure. This requirement drives the demand for efficient heat sinks, which dissipate the heat generated by these devices. Phase change material (PCM)-based heat sinks have become a popular passive cooling solution, increasingly replacing traditional heat sinks.

This research investigates finned PCM-based heat sinks using numerical simulations validated by existing literature and experimental data. Gallium is …

Clonality And Epidemiological Studies Of E. Coli Strain Collected From Abu Dhabi Emirate Using Ngs And Bioinformatic Tools, Ahmed Abdelrahman Mohamed

Theses

In the current landscape, where antibiotic resistance in bacteria is steadily rising, the role of bacterial genomics has assumed increasing significance. Therefore, it is necessary for microbiologists to acquire proficiency in the utilization of these methods and tools to harness their potential in gaining valuable insights into bacterial genomes. This can facilitate the development of innovative strategies for managing and treating bacterial infections. Here we present the power of the whole-genome sequencing technology in characterization of multidrug resistant Escherichia coli isolates. Fourteen Escherichia coli isolates were selected for this study. Following the standard microbiological techniques to confirm the sample identification, …

Performance Analysis Of Underground-To-Aboveground Communication In Agricultural Iot Networks, Irfana Ilyas Manzil

Theses

This thesis investigates the potential of LoRa, a low-power, wide-area networking technology, for establishing reliable communication between underground sensors and aboveground infrastructure. We comprehensively analyze LoRa's performance in both single-hop and multi-hop configurations, considering the impact of diverse environmental factors such as soil composition, moisture content, underground transmission distance, and path loss on signal propagation. We delve into the crucial role of the spreading factor (SF) within the LoRa communication system, analyzing its influence on network performance. Furthermore, we develop a comprehensive mathematical model for bit error rate (BER) under various channel conditions, including additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) and …

Fish-Eye Camera-Based Real-Time Pedestrian Crossing Predicting System, Mohammed Abdulla Almesafri

Theses

Fisheye cameras are widely used in traffic monitoring for their broad view, yet their distortion challenges deep-learning models in pedestrian detection and tracking. Despite available datasets like FishEye8K, collected in Hsinchu, Taiwan, and the availability of several studies that have delved into pedestrian prediction systems, a notable gap remains: the absence of datasets specifically designed for the cultural context of the UAE. This study aims to address this gap by introducing an in-house fisheye dataset tailored to enhance the prediction and tracking of pedestrians in fisheye footage within the UAE's environment. The present study addresses the development of a Graphical …

Topological Indices And Their Applications In Designing Drugs, Fedaa Ismail Abunawa

Theses

This research delves into the use of indices, in the field of drug design with a specific focus on anticancer medications. Topological indices, values derived from representations of chemical structures provide meaningful connections to the physical and chemical characteristics of molecules. These Indices act as tools for predicting behavior playing a vital role in crafting therapeutic drugs. The study primarily delves into topological indices like the Sombor index, Randi´c index, and Atom Bond Connectivity (ABC) index, which are calculated for structures and their relationships with physical properties such as molar volume, refractive index, and flash point are explored using statistical …

Mitochondrial Control Of Tumorigenicity And Immunogenicity Of Colorectal Cancer, Maram Esam Ahmed

Theses

The Methylation-controlled J protein (MCJ), also known as DNAJC15, serves as an endogenous negative regulator of mitochondrial respiration. MCJ plays a crucial role in cellular bioenergetics by regulating cellular metabolism, and its expression is inversely proportional to the extent of mitochondrial ATP production. In the current study, we aimed to investigate the relationship between MCJ expression and the tumorigenicity and immunogenicity of colon adenocarcinoma. To this aim, we utilized MCJ knockout (KO) mice to assess the impact of tumor-extrinsic MCJ expression in host cells, particularly immune cells, on anti-tumor responses. Comparing the growth of MCJ-expressing cancer cells in wild-type vs. …

Studies On The Corrosion Of Bronze Artifacts From Sarouq Al-Hadid And Al-Qusais Archeological Sites In Dubai, Uae, Zainab Ali Salmin

Theses

This thesis compares the status of bronze artefacts from two archaeological sites in Dubai (UAE): the Sarouq Al-Hadid site (Stone Age to Early Islamic Period) and the Al- Qusais site (Late Bronze Age to Early Iron Age). The main objective of this research is to understand the two sites' environment and their influence on the corrosion of archaeological bronze artifacts found at the sites. This study uses mCed methods to comprehensively understand the corrosion behavior of bronze objects, depending on their burial environment. The two different sites presented different soil types and rates of corrosivity on the buried bronze artifacts, …

Visualizing Privately Protected Data: Exploring The Privacy-Utility Trade-Offs, Sarah Hayi Alkaabi

Theses

In a data-driven era, achieving a balance between privacy and utility is crucial. Organizations often utilize data for research, analysis, and enhancement of services, which emphasizes the significance of effective privacy-preserving techniques to protect individuals' privacy and comply with regulations. This equilibrium is vital in data visualization to derive insightful decisions from data representations. The goal is to evaluate the trade-off between privacy preservation and data utility, understanding how differentially private parameters impact effective visualizations. Valuable insights will guide strategies for achieving optimal privacy-preserving visualization techniques. The study aims to investigate the effects on privacy and data utility in different …

Diversity, Distribution, And Determinants Of Bacterial Communities In Arctic Soil, Amna Khaleefa Alhemeiri

Theses

Arctic soils host diverse bacterial communities crucial for ecosystem functioning and nutrient cycling. Understanding the factors shaping their diversity and distribution is essential to assess ecosystem responses to climate warming. This study aimed to assess and compare bacterial diversity and community structure between high- and sub-arctic ecosystems and explore the environmental and climatic factors determining their distribution. We collected 16S rRNA gene amplicon sequence data from 999 samples of high- and sub-arctic soils. All the data was pre-processed and quality-controlled using a similar bioinformatics methodology, followed by statistical analyses including alpha and beta diversity assessments, and volatility analysis using QIIME2. …

The Effect Of Nuciferine On The Renal Dysfunction Following Ischemia/Reperfusion Injury, Sundus Farag Sallabi

Theses

Renal Ischemia-Reperfusion Injury (IRI) is an inevitable consequence of some surgical procedures and clinical conditions such as renal transplantation and aortic cross-clamping. The pathophysiology of renal IRI includes oxidative stress, an aggravated inflammatory response, apoptotic cell death, and fibrogenesis. These pathophysiological processes underlying renal IRI lead to the development of Acute Kidney Injury (AKI). Therefore, there is a need for effective and affordable therapeutic agents, such as phytochemical compounds to mitigate this injury. Nuciferine (NF), is a phytochemical compound extracted from the plant Nelumbo nucifera Gaertn and has been selected for its antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties as demonstrated in the …

Tribological Performance Of Ceramic On Textured Polyethylene Contact For Artificial Hip Implants, Sandhya Vaidyanathan

Theses

Revision total hip arthroplasty (rTHA) is an expensive and surgically risky procedure that is necessary in the case of a failed primary total hip arthroplasty (pTHA). The cause of failure in artificial hip joints is often rooted in the tribological performance of the bearing surfaces such as increased wear and reduced lubrication. Surface texturing is a surface modification technique which has been studied for aerospace and automotive applications and has shown promise in the biomedical field of artificial human joints in the last two decades. Several studies have been done to assess the tribological performance of introducing surface micro-textures as …

Neural Operator For Accelerating Coronal Magnetic Field Computations In Bifrost Mhd Model, Yutao Du

Theses

The application of the Tensorized Fourier Neural Operator (TFNO) to significantly enhance the computational efficiency of coronal magnetic field calculations within the Bifrost Magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) model is introduced in this study. Leveraging simulated data from the European Sunrise Science Data Center, the TFNO? an extension of the Fourier Neural Operator (FNO) that incorporates tensor decomposition for improved handling of high-dimensional data?is employed to solve time-varying partial differential equations (PDEs) over a 3D domain. The performance of the TFNO is compared with traditional machine learning methods, including Vision Transformer and CNN-RNN (encoder-decoder) architectures, to demonstrate its accuracy, computational efficiency, and scalability. …

The Next Strike: Pioneering Forward-Thinking Attack Techniques With Rowhammer In Dram Technologies, Nakul Kochar

Theses

In the realm of DRAM technologies this study investigates RowHammer vulnerabilities in DDR4 DRAM memory across various manufacturers, employing advanced multi-sided fault injection techniques to impose attack strategies directly on physical memory rows. Our novel approach, diverging from traditional victim-focused methods, involves strategically allocating virtual memory rows to their physical counterparts for more potent attacks. These attacks, exploiting the inherent weaknesses in DRAM design, are capable of inducing bit flips in a controlled manner to undermine system integrity. We employed a strategy that compromised system integrity through a nuanced approach of targeting rows situated at a distance of two rows …

Optimizing Social Determinant Of Health Concept Extraction, Niharika Singh

Theses

Generative Artificial Intelligence has recently garnered enormous attention for a varied number of reasons, one of them being its capacity to automate complex tasks. As the potential for integrating Generative Artificial Intelligence across technology, media, and healthcare grows, many tasks previously reliant on manual or algorithm-intensive methods can be simplified significantly. One such challenge is concept extraction, which is a labor-intensive process, especially when performed manually for building robust ontologies. It involves analyzing text to identify and extract relevant concepts, key phrases, entities, and relationships between these entities. This thesis explores various challenges of concept extraction from the ABCD (Adolescent …

Strawberry Nectar Preservation Through Innovative Techniques And Energy Evaluation For High-Pressure Processing, Caterina Scaioli

Theses

Strawberries are universally adored by people of all ages, owing to their richness in vitamins, nutrients, and antioxidants, offering myriad health benefits, including combating free radicals. However, despite their popularity, strawberry juices or nectars are not commonly found in markets due to their delicate structure, which makes them prone to rapid deterioration of their prized qualities and vibrant red color. In the food industry, preventing browning and nutrient deterioration are often the primary challenges faced when processing red juices. Traditional preservation methods, such as pasteurization, are inadequate in maintaining their freshness. The focus of this study is to explore alternative …

Methodology For Developing Biodegradable Polymer Blends And Composites For Agriculture, Fangzhong Xing

Theses

The use of polyethylene (PE) films to improve soil conditions and to increase crop yield has produced microplastics that are harmful to our ecosystem. The overall objective of this thesis is to develop an effective biodegradable polymer/composite to replace PE, and hence, to reduce microplastic pollution. The focus of this research is to develop a systematic protocol for assessing the suitability of the biodegradable films based on industry standards in agriculture. For this purpose, a range of biodegradable polymer blends are prepared using polylactic acid (PLA) and polybutylene adipate-co-terephthalate (PBAT) with varying PLA to PBAT ratios. Solvent casting combined with …

Comparison Of Methods For Creating Populations Of Models By Solving Stochastic Inverse Problems, Elizabeth Epstein

Theses

Given a parametric family of models and observational data, a researcher may be faced with an inverse problem: what distribution of parameters best creates a set of models that produce the observed data? Traditionally, Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) has commonly been used as a method to solve these stochastic inverse problems. In recent years, however, Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) have been employed. The effectiveness of Markov Chain Monte Carlo methods as compared to a conditional generative adversarial network (cGAN) when applied to a family of models produced by a system of ordinary differential equations that model viral load over …

Marking Estimation In Petri Nets Using Dynamic Mode Decomposition, Aditya Kale

Theses

Petri Nets (PNs) are a well-established framework for modeling and analyzing complex systems with interacting, concurrent processes. This thesis extends traditional Petri Net methodologies by integrating Dynamic Mode Decomposition (DMD), a technique originally developed for fluid dynamics, to analyze Continuous Petri Nets (CPNs). By applying DMD to CPN marking evolution, this research constructs a reduced-order model that captures its dynamics through dynamic modes and eigenvalues, enabling prediction of future markings without detailed knowledge of transition firings or underlying deterministic models. The principal contribution of this research is extending the kit of tools available for analysis of CPN dynamics, providing insights …

Effects Of Exoskeletal-Assisted Walking Rehabilitation On Gait Of Patients Post Stroke, Archisha Kanchan

Theses

Stroke can have detrimental effects on one's body. Its symptoms can range from lightheadedness to blurred vision to body paralysis. One of the more common effects of stroke is difficulty walking where many of the patients who have suffered from stroke are unable to ambulate fully. To mitigate gait difficulties, patients typically follow through with various kinds of physical therapy to help with their gait movements. Recently, robotic exoskeleton (RE) walking therapy has been used as a more innovative approach to gait rehabilitation, in conjunction with other physical therapy session techniques. However, studies involving RE therapy within the stroke population …

Targeted Drug Delivery: Investigating Protein Corona Behavior, Atharva Markale

Theses

Due to high specificity and less toxicity, nanoparticles have become promising for targeted drug delivery against cancer, although they face challenges when they enter the bloodstream, making their behavior unpredictable. The deposition of proteins on nanoparticles, the protein corona, changes their biosignature, affecting their circulation, drug release potency, targeting ability, and immunogenicity. The continuous exchange of protein layers on a nanoscale is complex to analyze.

Nanoparticle tracking analysis (NTA) is a method to characterize nanoparticles in blood plasma by combining principles of light scattering microscopy and Brownian motion. In this work, time-dependent experiments with plasma were conducted to analyze the …

Electrochemical Nitrate Reduction To Ammonia On Cu Based Nanoparticles Using Quantum Mechanical Simulations, Kathan Bhavin Shukla

Theses

Nitrate reduction to ammonia (NRA) is critical for environmental remediation and energy conservation, as it can remove harmful nitrate (NO₃^-) from water sources while producing usable ammonia (NH₃). Cu represents one of the most promising non-noble-metal NRA electrocatalysts. However, the intrinsic catalytic activity of Cu facets and their influence under different pH conditions remain unclear, particularly in the presence of ions commonly found in wastewater such as Cl^-, Na⁺, Mg²⁺, and Ca²⁺. Using density functional theory (DFT) calculations, we evaluated the nitrate reduction to ammonia (NRA) pathways …

Complementing Vehicle Trajectories Using Two Camera Viewpoints, Katsuaki Nakano

Theses

Traffic volume surveying is a crucial activity to get traffic statistics for road management and traffic congestion control. In recent years, the target environment of traffic volume surveying has become more complex, such as the fully automated surveillance of many-way intersections. Further compounding this complexity, some local governments may not be able to install a camera at a high enough elevation to capture the entire intersection due to environmental, legal, safety, or cost restrictions. Therefore, bigger objects such as buses and trucks often occlude other vehicles in the captured image. This occlusion degrades the accuracy of counting and is one …

A Programmable Look-Up Table-Based Processing In Memory Architecture For Massively Parallel, Energy-Efficient Processing Of Data-Intensive Applications Within Dram, Purab Ranjan Sutradhar

Theses

As modern computing workloads become increasingly data-intensive, the limitations of traditional digital computing hardware, especially in terms of communication bandwidth between memory and processors, are becoming more apparent. Surprisingly, the performance and energy efficiency of the state-of-the-art are not primarily constrained by the computing power of advanced processing architectures but rather by the low communication bandwidth between the memory and the processor. This challenge necessitates a clever re-architecting of digital computing hardware to make the communication between the processor and the memory more energy-efficient, faster, and capable of supporting significantly higher bandwidth. Memory-centric computing emerges as a novel, alternate computing …

Human-Machine Interactions For Behavioral Health Care, Zhiwei Yu

Theses

About one in four American adults (26%) and 20.3% of children aged 8 to 16 years reported behavioral health concerns in 2023. However, a substantial gap remains between demand for behavioral healthcare services and access to such services. In response, research efforts have been made to advance effective and accessible approaches to provide assessments and treatments for populations with behavioral health needs. Yet, two primary challenges exist in current practice and research: 1) self-reports and manual observation-based assessments are subjective and labor-intensive, as evaluations are limited to the availability of clinical professionals; 2) they only target the general experiences but …

Machine Learning Models For Enhanced Stock Trading Strategies, Alyaa Al Ali

Theses

The purpose of this research is to develop sophisticated machine-learning models that can predict stock price movements, taking into account the multifaceted influences that create volatility in financial markets. To navigate the complexities of market dynamics effectively, investors, financial institutions, and academia rely on precision stock price predictions. This research generates actionable buy and sell signals by using historical stock data, technical market indicators, Linear Support Vector Machines (LSVM), Neural Networks, and Logistic Regression. A distinctive feature of this model is it uses market indicators such as PPO, MACD, RSI Signal, Bollinger Bands, ROC Signal, and DX Signal instead of …

Spatiotemporal Alignment Of Event Stream With Images And Active Illumination, Abhijan Wasti

Theses

Unlike conventional frame-based cameras that form images by sampling all pixels within the duration of the global/rolling shutter, a pixel in an event camera can be triggered independently when the log intensity change in scene luminance at the pixel exceeds a threshold. This unique feature provides several advantages over conventional sensors, including high dynamic range (HDR) (≈120dB), high temporal rate (≈10,000Hz), low latency (< 1ms), and low power requirements (≈10mW). These properties make them excellent candidates for applications such as high-speed photography, HDR image reconstruction, object tracking, depth estimation, simultaneous localization and mapping, and surveillance and monitoring. Despite their potential, the asynchronous and spatially sparse nature of events poses challenges to event processing and interpretation. This is because most advanced image processing and computer vision algorithms are designed to work with conventional image formats, and not with temporally dense streams of asynchronous pixel events (i.e., the event stream). Although emerging techniques in supervised machine learning demonstrate promise, continued and rapid progress relies on the availability of labeled event datasets, which are scarce, and difficult to produce. Moreover, generating reliable events for training models is challenging due to the scene-dependent nature of event generation, which is further complicated by varying illumination and relative motion. In this thesis, we attempt to address these limitations with a novel imaging paradigm involving the capture of frames from a conventional frame-based camera that has been spa tially aligned and temporally synchronized with an event sensor. Our active illumination source allows us to generate events more consistently even under challenging illumination and motion in the scene. We demonstrate the feasibility of such a setup for a mobile eye tracking system and acquire subpixel and microsecond accurate spatiotemporal alignment. Our method facilitates the use of pre-trained models that operate on conventional images to detect features that can then be used to train models that can be applied directly to the event stream. This serves as the next step in event-based imaging and unlocks new possibilities in computer vision and imaging technology.

Unravelling Micro-Mysteries: Separating Microscopic Entities Using Electrokinetic Microsystems, Nuzhet Nihaar Nasir Ahamed

Theses

There is an increasing demand for the development of rapid and reliable methods for microparticle and cell separations in applications that range from clinical analysis to food and environmental safety assessments. Microfluidic systems, being portable and offering a response within minutes, are particularly attractive. Electrokinetic (EK) methods are a growing area in microfluidics, due to their robustness, rapid response time, low cost, and label-free analysis of micron-sized particles, including intact microorganisms. EK methods require the application of an electric stimulation, such as direct-current (DC) or alternating-current (AC) potentials, to induce different EK phenomena, such as electrophoresis, electroosmotic flow and/or dielectrophoresis, …