Digital Commons Network^™

Synthesis Of Small Molecule Modulators Of Non-Traditional Drug Targets, Jamie Nunziata

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This work details the effort toward structure-activity-relationship (SAR) studies and synthesis of the small molecule modulators of two non-traditional drug targets. The first part of this manuscript (chapters 1–2) will discuss the collaborative work and synthesis of an inhibitor of Slingshot Homology 1 (SSH1) with the potential therapeutic application toward Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) treatment. The second part (chapters 3–6) will discuss the synthetic efforts toward modulation of a protein target known as STING, or stimulator of interferon genes, with the therapeutic application toward autoimmune disease or anti-tumor activity.

AD is a progressive and degenerative illness that holds the title of …

Synthesis Of Tools For The Investigation And Treatment Of Infectious Diseases, Grant Lawrence

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Modern medicine’s ability to treat a wide array of diseases is due mainly to the development of small-molecule drug discovery. Thousands of years of traditional medicines have been dwarfed in less than a hundred years. In addition, drug discovery has becoming a more consistent process with the introduction of the clinical trials process as well.Plasmodium is a genus of tropical parasites that have the potential to wreak havoc on billions of people globally. Current methods of drug discovery aimed at defeating these parasites require expensive assays that use radioactive material. By using an alkyne-labeled agent instead of a tritium-labeled agent, …

Exposure Characteristics Of Environmental Chemicals By Life Stages, Nisha Vijayakumar

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Environmental chemicals are ubiquitous and can contribute to human exposure. These exposures can result in long-term health consequences if they occur in early life. However, exposures to environmental chemicals are not evenly distributed throughout childhood. As a result, there exists variation in the levels of chemical exposure depending on the developmental stages, pathways of exposure, and broader systemic factors. However, in early life, limited research exists on exposures to environmental chemicals, particularly phthalates, pesticides, and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). In addition, environmental exposures to phthalates, pesticides, and PAHs, considering life stages, have not been fully explored. Hence it is imperative …

Machine Learning Approach For Static Ransomware Analysis, Aldin Vehabovic

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Ransomware is a form of malware which uses encryption methods to make data inaccessible to legitimate users. This cyberthreat has emerged as one of the most serious security challenges today, and a wide range of ransomware families have been developed and deployed, causing immense damage to governments, corporations, and private users. As this malware type continues to expand, governments across the world are taking serious steps to limit its reach. In addition, researchers have proposed a range of ransomware detection and attribution schemes, most of which use advanced machine learning (ML) techniques to process and analyze real-world empirical data from …

Using Active Student Responding And Competition Via Kahoot! To Improve Student Academic Engagement At College Level, Brittany Pearson

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Active student responding (ASR) is an effective intervention used in schools to improve student engagement and academic performance. Among the various ASR modalities, online applications have received much more attention than low-tech ASR modalities due to the widespread use of smartphones and the availability of mobile applications. One totable online application is Kahoot!, which offers a range of interactive features. Considering the limited existing research on using ASR at the college level, particularly, using Kahoot!, this study examined the use of Kahoot! to improve academic engagement in college students. The study was conducted with one undergraduate class in applied behavior …

Meta-Analysis Of United States Seabird Populations Based On Ocean Biodiversity Information System (Obis) Records (1965–2018), Savannah Hartman

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Understanding the distribution of organisms is an important priority for society as we live through ecosystem transformations that threaten the well-being of all organisms. I have approached the dynamic and complex issue of studying biodiversity by using open-access seabird data collected along the Americas since the 1960s. I explained how these data have changed over time and space, how certain species populations could have shifted over time, and possible correlations between this potential geographic change and select environmental variables.

In Chapter 2 I evaluated the suitability of the open-access data archive Ocean Biodiversity Information System (OBIS) for supporting detailed inquiry …

Exploring The Impact Of Eddies On Southern Ocean Biogeochemical Structure Using Bgc-Argo Float Observations, Nicola J. Guisewhite

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The Southern Ocean plays a crucial role in global ocean circulation, and global heat and nutrient transport. However, this region is both distant and dangerous and is therefore largely under-sampled and understudied. Methods to fill in biogeochemical data-gaps include using limited in-situ data in models to output biogeochemical property estimates, but a number of recent studies have raised concerns about how most Southern Ocean models do not resolve eddies. Eddies are known to impact biogeochemistry around the globe but little is known about their impact in the Southern Ocean. This study examines temperature, salinity, oxygen, nitrate, and dissolved inorganic carbon …

Optimizing The Membrane-Assisted Recovery Of Solids (Mars) Technology For Nutrient Removal And Recovery From Concentrated Waste Streams, Ben Yamin Hoque

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The effective management of nutrients, such as nitrogen and phosphorus, in decentralizedwastewater treatment environments is a pressing challenge. These nutrients pose significant risks to the environment and public health when discharged into water bodies, while their recovery and reuse can help alleviate nutrient shortages in various industries, including agriculture. Conventional biological treatment methods used in centralized facilities are not suitable for decentralized systems due to operational complexities and space limitations. Chemical treatment mechanisms, such as adsorption, ion exchange, precipitation, and air-stripping, offer potential solutions but are accompanied by challenges like high costs and logistical issues. Therefore, finding a sustainable and …

Exploration Of Shared Passenger Urban Air Mobility – Integrated Network Design, Operation Scheduling And System Configuration, Zhiqiang Wu

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Urban air mobility (UAM) is an emerging concept proposed in recent years that uses electric vertical take-off and landing vehicles (eVTOLs). UAM is expected to offer an alternative way of transporting passengers and goods in urban areas with significantly improved mobility by making use of low-altitude airspace. Considering the high capital investment of eVTOLs and relative high fee of using UAM passenger service, a viable UAM format is shared passenger service. Such a service is usually station-based, i.e., with vertiport located in popular sites where potential passengers can access. To understand the viability of such use cases, the vertiport owners …

Enhancing And Securing Wireless Medical Technology For Diagnosis And Treatment Of Lower Urinary Tract Dysfunction, Farhath Zareen

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Lower urinary tract dysfunction (LUTD) is a debilitating medical condition that affects millions of individuals worldwide. Urodynamics is the current gold standard for diagnosing LUTD but uses non-physiologically fast, retrograde cystometric filling to obtain a brief snapshot of bladder function. Current state-of-the-art research in bladder monitoring includes ambulatory urodynamics using wireless implantable devices to evaluate bladder function during natural filling for long-term monitoring. However, there are various challenges and limitations to this multi-sensor approach. This research focuses on developing frameworks for automated event detection, data analysis, and optimization of long-term bladder recordingsto improve the diagnosis and treatment of LUTD. In …

Optimization Techniques For Machine Learning Inference And Near Memory Image Processing In Hardware For Highly Constrained Iot Edge Nodes, Rajeev Joshi

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The growing demand for fast and energy-efficient hardware for resource-constrained Internet of Things (IoT) edge devices has highlighted the limitations of conventional computing architectures. This research focuses on addressing the demand for fast, optimized, and energy-efficient machine learning inference engines as well as image processing in IoT edge applications. In this work, we address three challenging research problems and devise efficient solutions. Our investigation involved comprehensive exploration and analysis, leading to the proposal of effective approaches for overcoming these demanding issues. Through our work, we contribute novel solutions that offer improved efficiency and effectiveness in handling these research problems.

First, …

Multimodal Assessment Of Human Behavior With Applications In Analysis Of Autism Spectrum Disorder, Sk Rahatul Jannat

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Human behavior analysis is an important application area of artificial intelligence. Usingdata collected from sensors (e.g., cameras), human behavior including, but not limited to, emotions, expressions, body movement, and eye gaze are analyzed. This analysis is useful in applications in diverse fields ranging from healthcare, defense, education, and marketing. Considering this, in this dissertation, we have proposed new approaches to emotion and expression recognition, subject identification, and classification of autism spectrum disorder. More specifically, this dissertation has the following contributions: 1) A new approach for multimodal ubiquitous emotion recognition is proposed; 2) Investigation into the impact of large expression variations …

Flow Generation And Propagation From Headwater Wetlands To Downstream Waters, Leanne Marie Stepchinski

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Headwater wetlands are connected to one another and to downstream waters by dynamic hydrologic flowpaths, functioning as integrated hydrologic networks at the watershed scale. Headwater wetlands perform a variety of hydrologic lag, sink, and source functions, including flow generation and propagation, thereby contributing to the natural flow regimes of downgradient waters. The functions of individual wetlands and their contributions to hydrologic connectivity and subsequently to the natural flow regime have been widely studied and are well understood. Comparatively, the functions and hydrologic connectivity within wetland complexes as a whole and their collective subsequent contributions to the natural flow regime of …

Enhancing Smart Grid Security And Reliability Through Graph Signal Processing And Energy Data Analytics, Md Abul Hasnat

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Situational awareness in a large, dynamic, and complex cyber-physical critical infrastructure, such as a smart grid, is vital for ensuring its smooth and uninterrupted operation. With the evolving realities of the modern-day smart grids, new challenges associated with the situational awareness of these systems are emerging that demand intelligent and efficient solutions. This dissertation intends to address several problems for enhancing situational awareness by studying the dynamic interaction among the components of the smart grids through energy data analytics using various data-driven, machine learning, and graph signal processing (GSP) techniques. The presented work provides valuable insight into the data-driven analysis …

Detection Of Subsidence In West-Central Florida Using Persistent Scatterer Interferometry And Near-Surface Geophysics, Tonian R. Robinson

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation consists of three studies that employ Persistent Scatterer Interferometry (PSI, also known as PSInSAR) to better understand how subsidence in west-central Florida relates to underlying geological processes. In the first study, near-surface geophysical methods (Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) and Electrical Resistivity (ERT)), terrestrial remote sensing applications (Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) and Structure from Motion (SfM)), and PSI were used to monitor the spatial and temporal behaviors of a suspected growing sinkhole in the Sandhill Boyscout Reservation, Hernando County, Florida. The survey area was located within and around a topographic low assumed to be the surface of the …

Enhancing The Safety And Reliability Of Closed-Loop Medical Control Systems, Shakil Mahmud

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) is a rapidly advancing field that relies heavily on semi- or closed-loop Wearable and Implantable Medical Devices (WIMDs). In recent years, there has been renewed interest in clinical automation, with researchers looking for innovative solutions for Physiological Closed-Loop Control Systems (PCLCS). However, these devices can have various security issues, including vulnerabilities in software and firmware, physical attacks, weak encryption/authentication, and compromised system components. Government agencies, including the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and European Medicines Agency (EMA), emphasize the importance of ensuring the safety and reliability of PCLCS since malfunctioning medical devices can …

Understanding How Cancer Adapts To Stress And Therapy Using Evolutionary Game Theory, Mariyah Pressley

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Adaptive responses in cancer promote disease initiation, progression, and resistance to treatment. Understanding the underlying evolutionary dynamics behind these adaptive responses is crucial for developing effective therapeutic strategies. Evolutionary game theory (EGT) has proven a useful tool in analyzing how different cellular behaviors and evolutionary forces shape the dynamics of tumor growth, response to therapy, and the emergence of resistance. In this dissertation, we utilize EGT to understand the adaptive responses of cancer through the lens of ecology and evolution. By employing fitness-generating models and exploring various ecological contexts, we aimed to unveil critical factors influencing aggressive cell phenotypes, treatment …

Development Of Antimicrobial Guanidinylate Polycarbonates, Menglin Xue

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The World Health Organization (WHO) has identified the emergence of antibiotic resistance as one of the top 10 threats to public health. This is exemplified by serious threats such as methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) and vancomycin-resistant Enterococcus faecalis (VREF), and the urgent threat posed by Clostridioides difficile to human health. As part of a multifaceted combat strategy against these pathogenic bacteria, host-defense peptide (HDP)-mimicking polymers have proven to be resourceful and promising. However, a vast majority of antibiotic polymer applications were limited to topical applications due to their potential systematic toxicity. Herein, we report the design and synthesis of a …

Zinc-Mediated Reductive Acylation And Silylation Of Various P-Quinone Derivatives, Katrinah I. Tirado

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Quinones are compounds containing cyclohexadiene diones and can be found in a variety of biological systems. Quinones participate in redox cycling to initiate the formation of free radicals which contributed to their overall biological activity. When quinones are reduced by either biological or chemical reductants, they can become unstable and undergo autoxidation back to their quinoidal form. One way to avoid autoxidation is the use of protected hydroquinones. Many protected hydroquinones in literature have been shown to be efficient in drug delivery as probes or molecular containers or they can act like prodrugs to be released into active forms to …

Development And Application Of Γ-Aa Peptide On Enzyme Mimetic And Biomolecular Agents, Meng Gu

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation investigates the multifaceted utility of γ-AA peptides in various biological contexts, highlighting their capability in mimicking bioactive proteins, facilitating novel drug discovery, and obstructing protein-protein interactions. Initially, we introduced the design of an ingenious γ-AA peptide scaffold that replicates the hydrolysis capabilities of natural enzymes, with the intention to overcome their stability limitations. Notably, the designed catalyst exhibited excellent esterase activity with the coordination of Zn2+. Subsequently, optimization of a linear γ-AA peptide compound through a dimeric strategy resulted in P3-1, a potent inhibitor of amyloid-β 42. Evidenced by both in vivo and in vitro experiments, its potential …

One Year Impact Of The Advancing Coping And Engagement (Ace) Program On Advanced Placement And International Baccalaureate Student Success, Amanda C. Moseley

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Student success hinges on educational settings that feature a well-developed, comprehensive mental health support system (Hoover et al., 2019). Salient pieces of well-functioning mental health supports adhere to Multi-Tiered Systems of Support (MTSS) principles, including evidence-based practices with incremental intensity (Stoiber & Gettinger, 2015). Adolescents pursuing accelerated curricula in high school, specifically Advanced Placement courses (AP) and the International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme (IBDP), display a need for psychosocial support related to the stressors inherent to a rigorous curriculum (Suldo & Shaunessy-Dedrick, 2013b). Suldo and colleagues’ (2018) research on AP and pre-IBDP youth identified malleable predictors of success that became intervention …

Organizing And Communicating Health: A Culture-Centered And Necrocapitalist Inquiry Of Groundwater Contamination In Rural West Bengal, Parameswari Mukherjee

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

As a discursive point of praxis, this dissertation project seeks to record knowledge from below around the overlaps between health, water and health interventions emerging from rural communities located in North 24 Parganas and Purulia in West Bengal that are disproportionately impacted by water-insecurity. My dissertation also documents how multiple-stakeholders such as local NGOs, international NGOs, non-profits, and donor agencies organize access to safe water and health interventions for the water-insecure communities located in North 24 Parganas and Purulia. The integration of the CCA and necrocapitalism afford theoretical and methodological guidance in this dissertation to help document the localocentric stories …

Evolution Of Novice Teachers’ Instructional Visions To Teach Elementary Mathematics: A Longitudinal Collective Case Study, Amber Nicole Brown

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This longitudinal collective case study is about the transformational experiences of three novice elementary teachers, Tammy, Katie, and Michelle, as they moved from an elementary teacher preparation program, at a large research university in the southeast United States, through their first two years of teaching in different elementary school contexts. Situated within literature pertaining to instructional vision and visions of high-quality mathematics instruction (VHQMI), these cases were used to explore the teachers’ perceptions of their visions of high-quality mathematics instruction and how these perceptions evolve over time. The study design prioritizes novice teacher voices as predominant data sources to elevate …

The Relationships Between L1, Writing Quality, And Complexity, Accuracy, And Fluency In L2 Writing, Tuc C. Chau

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of the current dissertation is to map the relationships between first language (L1), writing quality, and syntactic complexity, accuracy, lexical complexity, and fluency (CALF) in second language (L2) writing. CALF are characteristics of language production that have been of significant interest in L2 writing research for the past few decades. Though they have been extensively studied as dependent variables that may vary as a function of other factors, they have been rarely studied together, much less in relation to L1 as an independent variable. Thus, this study explored the effects of L1 and writing quality, operationalized as score …

Applied Analysis For Learning Architectures, Himanshu Singh

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Modern data science problems revolves around the Koopman operator Cφ (or Composition operator) approach, which provides the best-fit linear approximator to the dynamical system by which the dynamics can be advanced under the discretization. The solution provided by Koopman in the data driven methods is in the sense of strong operator topology, which is nothing better then the point-wise convergence of data (snapshots) in the underlying Hilbert space. Chapter 2 provides the details about the aforementioned issues with essential counter-examples. Thereafter, provable convergence guarantee phenomena is demonstrated by the Liouville weighted composition operators Af,φ over the Fock space by providing …

Synthesis Of Constrained N-Heterocyclic Peptidomimetics And Development Of Strain-Release Reagents, Kyle P. Pedretty

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Part 1:The initial portion of this dissertation delves into the enhancement of β-sheet secondary structure stability through modification of the peptide backbone while examining the conformational characteristics of peptides featuring N-amino substituents. The investigation consists of two major studies, presented in separate sections. The first study outlines various approaches to achieve stable β-hairpin folds by introducing N-amino substituents to peptide strands. A novel method utilizing on-resin Mitsunobu cyclization between α-hydrazino acid residues and a serine or homoserine side chain was utilized to incorporate pyrazolidinone and tetrahydropyridazinone dipeptide constraints. To evaluate the impact of cyclic N-amino peptide building blocks on β-hairpin …

Exploring Novel Two Dimensional Diluted Magnetic Semiconductors And Heterostructures For Spintronics Applications, Thi Hai Yen Pham

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Atomically thin transition metal dichalcogenide (TMD) semiconductors hold enormous potential for modern optoelectronic devices, magnetic sensing, and quantum communications. Long-range ferromagnetism can be induced in TMD monolayers by introducing a small amount of magnetic dopants to form diluted magnetic semiconductors (DMSs), making them promising candidates for applications in ultralow-power and ultracompact spintronic nanodevices. This dissertation research aims to address two contemporary challenges in the fields of nano-magnetism and spintronics: controllability of magnetic dopants in TMD monolayers in the form of MX2 (M = W, Mo; X = S, Se) and understanding the fundamental physical mechanisms that give rise to magnetism …

Continuous Time Dynamic Mode Decomposition In The Presence Of Partial Knowledge And Streaming Data, Efrain H. Gonzalez

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Dynamic mode decomposition (DMD) is a physically interpretable data driven technique for modeling dynamical systems. The DMD method uses time series data where each data point is referred to as a snapshot and represents the value of the state at a particular moment in time. The important patterns found in the data are extracted and then used to create a model for the system. Once the important pieces have been obtained reduced order modeling can be used to reduce the complexity of the model.

But, DMD has evolved since its inception. After its association with the Koopman operator, DMD has …

Classification Of Finite Topological Quandles And Shelves Via Posets, Hitakshi Lahrani

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The objective of this dissertation is to investigate finite topological quandles and topological shelves. Precisely, we give a classification of both finite topological quandles and topological shelves using the theory of posets. For quandles with more than one orbit, we prove the following Theorem.

Proposition 0.0.1. Let X be a finite quandle with n orbits X₁, ... , X_n. Then any right continuous poset on X is n-partite with vertex sets X₁, ... , X_n.

For connected quandles, we prove the following Theorem.

Theorem 0.0.2. There is no T …

Exploratory Data-Driven Models For Water Quality: A Case Study For Tampa Bay Water, Sandra Sekyere

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Water, a crucial resource for sustaining life, covers approximately 70% of the earth's surface. Nonetheless, the quality of water is deteriorating rapidly due to the rapid growth of urban areas and industries, which is a worrying trend causing harm to human health and the ecosystem. Water quality forecasting has a key role in water resources management by enabling effective pollution control, ecosystem monitoring, and decision-making.

Previously, traditional statistical models were used to forecast water quality, but they were unable to examine the non-linear relationships between water quality parameters, and they assumed that all datasets were distributed normally. This study uses …