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Antisocial Behavior From Adolescence To Early Adulthood: Heritability, Stability, And Correlates Using A Longitudinal Twin Sample, Ashley Dibble

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to examine the heritability, stability, and outcomes of antisocial behavior from adolescence into adulthood in a longitudinal twin sample. Specifically, the genetic and environmental influences on conduct disorder, adult antisocial behavior, and alcohol dependence were examined. The influence of genes and environment on the relationship between these disorders was also examined. The study utilized a subset of FinnTwin12, a population-based twin study that consists of five consecutive birth cohorts. The subsample consisted of 1035 twin pairs (N = 2070) and of that 2070, 1854 completed the intensive interview at age 14. At age 22, …

"Sealing Their Two Fates With A Fracture": Ted Hughes's "Pyramus And Thisbe" As An Emblem Of The Paradox Of Translation, Carolyn Carter

Theses and Dissertations

This work explores how the 20th century English poet Ted Hughes translates one episode from Ovid's Metamorphoses (the "Pyramus and Thisbe" myth included in Hughes's Tales from Ovid) to make it an emblem for his notions about translation. In translating "Pyramus and Thisbe," Hughes removed many of the formal Ovidian elements and amplified the themes of violence and mingling latent in the myth. In doing so, he highlights the concept that communication sometimes necessitates breaking, symbolized primarily by the chink in the wall through which Pyramus and Thisbe whisper to one another. This metaphor for translation corroborates Hughes's discursive …

Positive Allosteric Modulators Of Alpha4beta2 Neuronal Nicotinic Receptors: Synthesis And In Vitro Studies, Atul Jain

Theses and Dissertations

des-Formylflustrabromine (dFBr), isolated from the marine organism Flustra foliacea, is the first selective, positive allosteric modulator (PAM) of α4β2 nicotinic acetylcholine receptors that potentiates the action of the neurotransmitter acetylcholine (ACh). Most agonists for this receptor population are not selective and can activate other nACh receptors. A selective PAM, which activates α4β2 nACh receptors only in the presence of ACh, might find application in the treatment of of various neurological diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease or autism. dFBr was examined and found to produce a biphasic dose-response curve over a wide concentration range (i.e., potentiation at low concentration, but inhibition …

Constructing An Islamist Vision: A Discourse Analysis Of Egyptian Islamist Websites, Youssef Esmat Morshedy

Theses and Dissertations

After the January 25th 2011 revolution in Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) formed the Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) and the Salafis formed several parties, including the popular "Al-Nour Party" (The Light) party. Many Egyptians joined the parties as they increased in popularity. On July 3 2013, however, the military intervened and deposed the Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohamed Morsi, the first elected civilian president in Egypt’s modern history. This research is guided by the broad question of how Egyptian Islamic groups present their ideologies and principles to the Egyptian society via their websites. Islamic movements gained popularity after Egypt’s Jan. 25 …

Urban Geographies Of Romance: Meeting And Mating In Cairo, Elaine Van Dalen

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis offers a spatial analysis of engagement and marriage among young people from Būlāq ad-Dakrūr, Cairo. It explores how these individuals negotiate their access to spaces within a neoliberal city and use them to find potential partners, meet with those partners once they have found them and to live with them when they first get married. The researcher had informal conversations with about 30 individuals between the age 18 and 30 and their family members, mostly during the spring of 2013. The outcome shows that the neighborhood has a primary function in the shaping of gendered subjectivities that try …

Mems Based Heavy Metal Detector, Inas Ramsis

Theses and Dissertations

Water pollution by toxic heavy metals is one of the most serious environmental hazards to humans’ health. As they are emitted into the water resources and adsorbed by soil, plants, fish and animals and eventually accumulate in human bodies causing a variety of serious diseases. Therefore, there is an urgent need to develop a continuous, rapid, automatic, and on-site heavy metals environmental monitoring system for the online detection of heavy metals pollution at various water resources and industrial waste networks. In this thesis the main objective is to develop a microfluidic platform for heavy metal analyte sensing in which a …

A Study Of The Ionic Diffusion Under The Effect Of Electric Field (Computer Simulation With Reference To Biological Membrane), Hagar Mohamed Fawzy

Theses and Dissertations

The biophysical studies of the biological system are far from being conclusive. Not only because this science is relatively recent, but also because of the lack of physical data. Also there are a lot of contradicting views among researchers as well as the poor theoretical interpretation of the reported experimental data. However, the advent of computer science with the considerable storage capability and highly vast calculations gives modeling techniques a great advantage and opens a real door to better understanding of the complicated biological phenomena. The present thesis addressed the problem of ionic penetration through biological tissue under the effect …

On Body, Soul, And Popular Culture: A Study Of The Perception Of Plague By Muslim And Coptic Communities In Mamluk Egypt, Mohamed S. Maslouh

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis studies the Muslim and Coptic medical, theological, and philosophical perceptions of plague in Mamluk Egypt (1250-1517). It also details the responses to mass death caused by plagues in both popular culture and mainstream scholarly works. This is carried out by illustrating the various medical, and theological parameters which influenced the different understandings of plague. Attention will be given to the diversity of the medical traditions which coexisted and, sometimes, overlapped in medieval Egypt. This reveals the inadequacy of the convenient classifications and distinctions between the different medical traditions, which have been previously employed to explain plague in medieval …

The Representation Of Homosexuality Between Text Translation And Movie Adaptation In Midaq Alley And The Yacoubian Building, Rania Ahmed Salem

Theses and Dissertations

Mahfouz and Al-Aswany are recognized as major figures not only in Egypt but also worldwide, making them and the sensitive nature of their work doubly fraught: they are not only in the world’s literary spotlight, but under the watchful gaze of local observers. Midaq Alley (1947) and The Yacoubian Building (2005) reflect through many motifs, including homosexuality, the political as well as social repressions that inhibit the modern Egyptian society. These two novels underwent translation and adaptation because of not only Mahfouz's and Al-Aswany's skillful craft, but also the presentation of characters—that the readers or audience can identify with—living and …

Gendering Migratory Social Spaces In Upper Egypt, Azza Abdelrahman Mahmoud Salman

Theses and Dissertations

Male out migration especially to Gulf countries is a well-established phenomenon in Upper Egypt. It is considered the easy way out of poverty and unemployment. Moreover, remittances represent the only monetary source for most migratory families. This thesis explores the impact of male out migration on their community of origin with a special focus on its impact on women. Fieldwork has been conducted in the village of Hekma, Qena, Upper Egypt where everything is influenced by the absence of men. A gendered approach is utilized to understand the everyday life of this community. This thesis consists of three main parts. …

Categorizing Women: Gender And Social Media During The 2011 Egyptian Revolution, Sydney Winston Barnes

Theses and Dissertations

From February 2011 to July 2012, formerly suppressed political parties struggled to fill the political void post-Hosni Mubarak. While debates about Egypt's political future circulated, individuals as well as dissident factions employed various interpretations of women and their roles to symbolically represent their varying ideologies. Despite the significance and economic value women produce as citizens, many political actors regularly bracket their concerns as irrelevant to the affairs of the state. As a result, political actors have engaged with new strategic techniques to access the various politicized publics that marginalized subaltern groups. The most publicized approach during this time, involved individual's …

El Thawra And El Balad: Narratives Of Youth About Protest Participation And Political Subjectivity In The January 25 Revolution, Ola Galal

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis documents the narratives of a group of Egyptian youth about their participation in the 18 days of protest and analyzes their narratives in terms of reasons and meanings of taking part in such events. First, I analyze how these youth constructed their memory of the 18 days and produced a certain version of history. Second, I look at the meanings they ascribed to the Revolution through examining their narratives about why and how they participated in the 18 days and how such an experience changed their perception about and their desire for participating in collective action and politics …

De Novo Metagenomic Assembly Of Microbial Communities From The Lower Convective Layer Of The Red Sea Atlantis Ii Brine Environment., Osama Said Ali

Theses and Dissertations

The lower convective layer of the Red Sea Atlantis II brine pool (ATII-LCL) is an unexplored environment that is characterized by harsh conditions of high temperature (68ºC), high salinity (26%), high concentration of heavy metals and very low oxygen content. Microbial communities inhabiting this extreme environment are expected to have unique structural and functional adaptations to survive such harsh conditions. These adaptations can be expressed by novel genes or new metabolic pathways. The recent advances in the next generation sequencing technologies have increased the size of the generated reads (500 bps in 454 pyrosequencing) and lowered the sequencing cost per …

Evaluation Of Rapid Low-Cost Colorimetric Methods For Diagnosis Of Multidrug-Resistant Tuberculosis In Limited-Resource Settings, Mai Mohamed Hesham Mansour

Theses and Dissertations

One third of the world's population is currently infected with tuberculosis (TB), a consuming airborne disease whose main causative agent is Mycobacterium tuberculosis. The majority of these patients are found in the world's poorest areas. Treatment of TB is a lengthy and demanding process utilizing a cocktail of powerful drugs; however, multidrug resistant TB (MDR-TB) strains, defined by resistance to both isoniazid (INH) and rifampicin (RIF), are now emerging worldwide and threatening disease control efforts. The major problem facing efforts to combat MDR-TB spread is its early detection. Conventional fairly affordable methods for drug resistance detection are based on solid …

Association Of Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms In The Cfh, Arms2 And Htra1 Genes With Risk Of Developing Age Related Macular Degeneration In Egyptian Patients, Radwa Ossama Abbas

Theses and Dissertations

Age related macular degeneration (AMD) is one of the leading causes of blindness in the elderly worldwide. Due to earlier clinical observations that AMD concentrates in families, a genetic component to the disease has been suggested. Several genetic studies have identified areas of association with AMD on chromosomes 1q31 and 10q26. On chromosome 1q31 the most famous single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) to be linked to AMD was rs1061170 on the complement factor H gene (CFH). This SNP was studied in several populations and was found to be highly associated with AMD in most Caucasian populations with odds Ratio (OR) reaching …

Influence Of Delta-6-Desaturase On Hepatic Membrane Composition In Obesity/Insulin Resistance: Implications For The Development Of Cardiometabolic Syndrome, Dina Ahmed Safwat Nemr

Theses and Dissertations

Obesity has become a worldwide phenomenon and has been accompanied by a parallel rise in the incidence of insulin resistance, type 2 diabetes, inflammation, dyslipidemia and cardiovascular disease. Together, these symptoms have been collectively referred to as “cardiometabolic disease" (CMD). Delta-6-desaturase catalyzes the rate limiting step in the conversion of linoleic acid (LA) into arachidonic acid (AA), which in turn is converted into pro-inflammatory eicosanoids. Increasing evidence suggests a link between D6D hyperactivity and the development of CMD, though this hypothesis remains to be tested experimentally. We hypothesized that obesity and a high-fat diet, leading to the development of CMD, …

Anti-Schistosoma Single-Domain Antibody-Nanoparticles Conjugate: A Novel Tool For Diagnostic And Therapeutic Applications, Mohamed Abdelazim Sallam

Theses and Dissertations

Nanotechnology has enthused excessive expectations in recent years, particularly in the biology and biomedical fields. Carbon-coated metallic nanomagnets reveal significant physicochemical properties, which are referred to as superparamagnetism, that when designed appropriately can be utilized to generate novel diagnostic and therapeutic applications for a wide range of biologically hazardous species. Schistosomiasis is a chronic parasitic disease that can infect both humans and animals, particularly cattle. It is caused by a trematode blood fluke of the genus Schistosoma which belong to the schistosomatidae family. At least 200 million individuals are infected in 75 countries while 600 million people are exposed to …

Life Cycle Assessment Of Dewatering Routes For Algae-Derived Biodiesel Processes, Daniel O'Connell

Theses and Dissertations

Biodiesel derived from algae is considered a sustainable fuel, but proper downstream processing is necessary to minimize the environmental footprint of this process. Algae is grown in dilute liquid cultures, and achieving the low water contents required for extraction represents one of the greatest challenges for the production of algae derived biodiesel. An analysis of the life cycle emissions associated with harvesting, dewatering, extraction, reaction, and product purification stages for algae biodiesel was performed. This "base case" found 10,500 kg of total emissions per t BD with 96% of those attributed to the spray dryer used for dewatering. Alternative cases …

Klf2 Is Required For Normal Mouse Cardiovascular Development, Aditi Raghunath Chiplunkar

Theses and Dissertations

Krüppel-like factor 2 (KLF2) is expressed in endothelial cells in the developing heart, particularly in areas of high shear stress, such as the atrioventricular (AV) canal. KLF2 ablation leads to myocardial thinning, high output cardiac failure and death by mouse embryonic day 14.5 (E14.5) in a mixed genetic background. This work identifies an earlier and more fundamental role for KLF2 in mouse cardiac development in FVB/N mice. FVB/N KLF2-/- embryos die earlier, by E11.5. E9.5 FVB/N KLF2-/- hearts have multiple, disorganized cell layers lining the AV cushions, the primordia of the AV valves, rather than the normal single layer. By …

Animating Non-Rigid Bodies Using Motion Capture, Jie Long

Theses and Dissertations

Simulating the motion of a non-rigid body under external forces is a difficult problem because of the complexity and flexibility of the non-rigid geometry and its associated dynamics. Physically based animation of objects moving in the wind is computationally expensive, so simulation-based approaches oversimplify the model by ignoring important effects, such as tree's sheltering. Motion capture records actual responses of a non-rigid body to external forces and helps solve these problems. Mainly focusing on natural trees and ropes as instances of non-rigid bodies, we present a new approach to building motion for objects in wind using incomplete motion capture data …

A Divine Community Of Priests And Prophets: The Priesthood And Prophethood Of All Believers Motifs Considered Through Incorporated Trinitarianism, Raoul T. Perez

Theses and Dissertations

The "priesthood and prophethood of all believers" motifs are two theological perspectives which consider the function of all persons who make up the body of Christ to be as priests and prophets alongside their other callings. Historically though, proponents of the two motifs have neglected to interact them with one another; the priesthood motif simply casts Christians as priests and the prophethood motif depicts them solely as prophets. The perspectives have been siloed from one another, preventing a fuller understanding of both Christian identity and roles within the body of Christ. This thesis attempts to show how the two motifs …

`Open' For Collective Business: The Governance Of Contemporary Economic Cooperatives In A Corporate Q'Eqchi' Maya Town, Michael Frederic Young

Theses and Dissertations

This article examines the governance of a Q'eqchi' Maya community located on multiple margins who are cooperatively managing several businesses. I do so by first situating this study within the context of Guatemalan history wherein cooperatives were first promoted in various economic and environmental zones only to be subsequently viewed as subversive and targeted by the military. The community within this study is located in the Izabal Department, a region far less affected by Guatemala's genocidal past. I argue that the cooperative businesses created by this community have allowed for a selective incorporation of market-based relations that mitigate the commonly …

Executing And Teaching Science--The Breast Cancer Genetics And Technology-Rich Curriculum Professional Development Studies Of A Science Educator, Regina Evarn Wragg

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation presents my explorations in both molecular biology and science education research. In study one, we determined the ADIPOQ and ADIPORI genotypes of 364 White and 148 Black BrCa patients and used dominant model univariate logistic regression analyses to determine individual SNP and haplotype associations with tumor or patient characteristics in a case-case comparison. We found twelve associations between individual SNPs and patient or tumor characteristics that impact BrCa prognosis. For example, the ADIPOQ rs1501299 C allele was associated with ER+ tumors (OR=4.73, p=0.001) among White women >50 years of age at their time of diagnosis. Also, the A …

Thermal Infrared Imaging: Instrumentation And Method Development, Wayne O'Brien

Theses and Dissertations

A recently development thermal infrared camera system was improved by designing new components to downsize physical aspect and improve the instrument's performance. A new thermal infrared light source was developed and characterized. It is designed from a custom-made Macor backpiece that holds an alumina screw. High resistance wire is coiled around the screw. The coiled wire is covered with an alumina coating. Most light sources have a spectral emissivity similar to that of a blackbody emitter. This source has a spectral irradiance profile that is not similar to a blackbody source. Thus, the lamp has an improved efficiency in the …

Best Practices/Teaching Strategies For Teaching Reading In The Primary Grades, Kate Birney

Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

“Just Let Us Teach!”: Living Literacy Policy In And Around Maplewood Elementary School, Cindy Anne Morton-Rose

Theses and Dissertations

Through a sociocultural lens this study explored how four teachers, a reading teacher, and their principal lived literacy policy in practice in and around Maplewood Elementary School. This work grew out of three questions: (a) How do six policy stakeholders at one elementary school--four teachers, one administrator, and one reading teacher--make meaning of literacy policies? (b) How do these stakeholders' understandings shape the appropriation of these policies in their day-to-day literacy practices? and (c) How does the meaning-making of other stakeholders--district, state, and federal policy-makers--intersect with and inform the appropriation of policy by the six focal stakeholders? In asking these …

Resveratrol Attenuates The Development Of Trans-Aortic Constriction (Tac) Induced Heart Failure In Mice, Prakash Kumar Gupta

Theses and Dissertations

Heart failure (HF) still remains the leading cause of morbidity and mortality and imposes severe global affliction and enormous cost on the healthcare system. Although current pharmacological therapies have shown to slow down the progression of HF, but seems to have reached their limits in improving overall patient prognosis. Thus, an immediate call for novel alternate therapies are needed which act independently as well as in conjunction with current treatment modality. Studies were performed in the well-established transverse aortic constriction (TAC) model of chronic pressure overload (PO) in mice. In the first series of studies, Male C57BL6 mice (26-28 g) …

Fire On The Tongue: A Collection Of Poems, Nathan Adam White

Theses and Dissertations

The Influence of Ted Hughes and Seamus Heaney My relationship with poetry has been complex. I once felt that poetry, my last friend and greatest hope, had betrayed me, had shut me out and left me very alone. My pen lacked the power that poetry had promised as the last refuge of those who wished to breathe deeply, speak intimately, and inspire intensely. Others had the power to move me, but I seemed incapable of moving others; my lines lacked clarity, my phrases caused confusion. In a mood of irritable desperation I wrote these lines:

You live in the world, …

Motivation Towards Learning Perceived In Socratic Seminar Versus Traditional Lecture, Benjamin N. Roberson

Theses and Dissertations

As discussed in past literature, high school students often lack motivation towards learning (Crow, 2007; Lumsden, 1995). This lack of motivation interferes with student learning (Lumsden,1995; Vansteenkiste, Simons, Lens, Soenens, & Matos, 2005). At the middle school and collegiate level, Socratic Seminar is seen to provide motivation towards learning in students (Copeland, 2005; Mee, 2000; Strong, 1996); however, there is a need for research on student motivation as a result of Socratic Seminar at the high school level. The purpose of this study is to identify the extent to which, if any, differences exist in student motivation towards learning among …

Photography As A Spiritual Technique, Laura Elizabeth Garza-Meza

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study is to compare the spiritual benefits of practicing photography to the spiritual benefits of practicing prayer, meditation and yoga. Benefits noted were divided into the 4 dimensions of being human: physical, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual. The study considers Mexican leaders' perceptions of photography as a spiritual practice. A total of 105 Mexican leaders answered surveys. Of the 105 leaders, 14 were professors, 30 were entrepreneurs, 46 were business executives and 15 were students and homemakers (listed as "other") varying in ages from 21 to over 61. The design of this study is descriptive, while the …