Digital Commons Network^™

Identification Of Secondary Structural Elements Contained Within The Intrinsically Disordered N-Terminal Tail Of The Bloom’S Syndrome Helicase., Vivek Somasundaram

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The Bloom’s Syndrome Helicase (BLM) is one of five human RecQ helicases and is necessary for maintenance of genome stability. Whilst a crystal structure exists for the C-terminal domain of BLM, very limited structural knowledge is known about the intrinsically disordered N-terminal tail. This lack of insight exists, despite the fact that the N-terminus of BLM is essential for the overall biological activity of BLM. Here we provide an Nuclear Magnetic Resonance spectroscopy based approach that we used to identify two distinct ⍺-helices contained within the first 100 residues of BLM. In addition, we propose a mutagenesis-based approach involving rationally …

Advanced Analytical Method Development: From Highly-Enrolled Classroom To Data-Intensive Proteomics, Laxmi Sinduri Vuppala

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In analytical chemistry, method development is key to identifying, separating, and quantifying chemical components of interest systems. The chemical aspects are fundamental to understanding the subject of any analytical system, whether in academic research, industry, or government. These methodologies serve as a bridge between the classroom, where students are taught to be curious and enlightened, and research, where one strives to contribute. The Ph.D. dissertation integrates advanced methodologies in basic and applied research and advanced instrumentation, but the core criteria for validation remain the same. As part of chemical education curriculum development, a large cohort of undergraduates performed two gas …

4d Printing Of Smart Hydrogel Scaffold To Program Neural Stem Cell Differentiation, Omar Khater

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Injuries like Traumatic brain injuries (TBI) and Spinal cord injuries (CSI) areconsidered one of the biggest challenges in the medical sector as there is no specific treatment for these injuries and the medical intervention on these injuries is restricted to reducing the pain and removing the damaged human parts. One of the helpful and most effective treatment methods for these injuries involve neural tissue regeneration in the area of the injury. The main issue when trying to treat such injuries is that neural tissues are often unable to regenerate by themselves and require outer human intervention to differentiate. Biomedical scaffolds …

Elemental Sulfur And Metal Sulfide Minerals For Autotrophic Denitrification: Applications To Aquaculture, Groundwater Treatment, And Domestic Wastewater Treatment, Erica Amah Dasi

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Nutrient pollution of waterways, from excess N and P, is a global concern that results in harmful impacts the environment, human health, and aquatic animals. This dissertation harnesses sulfur autotrophic denitrification to remove nutrients from groundwater, domestic wastewater, and wastewaters produced from marine recirculating aquaculture systems (RAS). Part 1 evaluates the denitrification performance of woodchips and elemental sulfur in cyclic denitrification filters (WS-CDFs) integrated into marine RAS operated under saline conditions. Part 2 investigates the use of metal sulfide minerals, with and without oyster shells, for supporting nutrient removal from groundwater in batch reactors. Part 3 assesses …

Healthcare Iot System And Network Design, Halil Ibrahim Deniz

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The developing IoT concept offers many opportunities to service providers in the medical field. However, the functionality of the developed systems is increasing day by day, and it brings many different problems. One of the most important problems is the transmission of biomedical data of real-time monitoring systems to the medical server with the least delay. Network architectures are changing to meet the changing needs of densely connected devices, and “computing at the edge” is the new architectural approach emerging in IoT networks. This architecture is more dynamic than computation in the cloud because it enables data processing at each …

Functional Morphology And Taphonomy Of Ordovician–Silurian Diploporan Echinoderms, Stephen Ashley Hill

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Diploporan echinoderms were one of the most speciose groups of stemmed echinoderms during the Ordovician. Despite this widespread abundance, the fossil record of diploporan fauna consists primarily of incomplete specimens, with complete specimens being rare. While the theca, or body, is more commonly preserved, the feeding appendages and the attachment structures (i.e. stems or holdfasts) are seldomly preserved. Insight into these features is highly valuable to the understanding the paleoecology, like the feeding and respiratory strategies, of these enigmatic creatures.

One group of diploporan echinoderms which does have an extensive fossil record, is the Holocystites Fauna, primarily known from the …

Coupling 210Pb And 14C To Constrain Carbon Burial Efficiency Of Blue Carbon Ecosystems, Tynisha R. Martin

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Blue carbon ecosystems cover a small global area but have the potential to sequester large amounts of organic carbon (OC) from the coastal ocean in the sediment. Organic carbon is continually remineralized and exported in the dissolved form, which is currently only poorly accounted for in blue carbon budgets. Constraining carbon cycling in blue carbon systems is complicated by the range of carbon sources and sinks in the system and high export rates from the system. By coupling 14C and 210Pb chronometers to ascertain the amount of primary production stored within peat, it is possible to study carbon transport through …

Interfacing Computational Techniques With Synthetic And Spectroscopic Methods For Research And Education, Nicole Annette Miller

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Quantum Mechanics (QM) is a powerful tool in computational chemistry with a wide range of applications in both research and education. More and more, the scientific community is tackling research questions of increasing difficulty with an interdisciplinary approach between experimental and computational chemistry. QM methods are now developed to a point where computation can accurately predict chemical properties related to structure and function such as potential energy surfaces (PES), natural bond order analysis (NBO), nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), and electronic circular dichroism (ECD). Herein, QM methods will be applied to research in peptidomimetics through PES and NBO calculations (Chapter 2 …

Inflammatory Bowel Disease & Social (In)Visibility: An Interpretive Study Of Food Choice, Self-Blame And Coping In Women Living With Ibd, Jessica N. Lolli

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation is an interpretive project that uses autoethnography and qualitative interview methods to understand the role Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) plays in women’s quality of life and interpersonal relationships. It focuses on the impacts on patients of dietary changes and how food choice serves to make this ordinarily “invisible” illness visible to others, leading to unwanted exposure. Using Erving Goffman’s stigma theory and its extensions in studies of chronic illness, I demonstrate that IBD is characterized by layers of stigma because it creates situations in which patients are forced to disclose their illness even if they are not ready …

The Effects Of Temperature And Oxygen Availability On Aerobic Performance In Three Coastal Shark Species; Squalus Acanthias, Carcharhinus Limbatus, And Carcharhinus Leucas, Alyssa M. Andres

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Anthropogenically driven climate changes are altering marine habitats globally. Rising sea surface temperatures and coastal eutrophication, arising from global warming and coastal nutrient loading, have resulted in progressive ocean deoxygenation. This may restrict available habitat of marine organisms as studies suggest that the balance between metabolic oxygen demand and environmental supply plays an important role in limiting viable habitat and species fitness. As ectothermic predators, with temperature-dependent metabolism and high metabolic demands, coastal shark species may be susceptible to shifts in ocean temperature and oxygen. Such environmental changes may alter metabolic performance and ultimately success and survival within shark habitat. …

The Role Of Protein Palmitoylation In Two Disorders; X-Linked Intellectual Disability And Covid-19, Ahmed A. Ramadan

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The spike proteins of enveloped viruses are transmembrane glycoproteins that typically undergo post-translational attachment of palmitate on cysteine residues on the cytoplasmic facing tail of the protein. The role of spike protein palmitoylation in virus biogenesis and infectivity is being actively studied as a potential target of novel antivirals. Here, we report that palmitoylation of the first five cysteine residues of the C-terminal cysteine-rich domain of the SARS-CoV-2 S protein are indispensable for infection, and palmitoylation-deficient spike mutants are defective in membrane fusion. The DHHC9 palmitoyltransferase interacts with and palmitoylates the spike protein in the ER and Golgi, and knockdown …

Deep Learning And Feature Engineering For Human Activity Recognition: Exploiting Novel Rich Learning Representations And Sub-Transfer Learning To Boost Practical Performance, Ria Kanjilal

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

A significant gap exists in our knowledge of how domain-specific feature extraction compares to unsupervised feature learning in the latent space of a deep neural network for a range of temporal applications including human activity recognition. This dissertation aims to address this gap specifically for human activity recognition using acceleration data. To ensure reproducibility, we use two publicly available datasets, UniMiB-SHAR and ExtraSensory, with a well-established history in the human activity recognition literature. We methodically analyze the performance of 64 different combinations of i) learning representations (in the form of raw temporal data or extracted features), ii) traditional and modern …

Juvenile Homicide Offenders: A Life-Course Perspective, Norair Khachatryan

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Murder by offenders under the age of 18 is a cause for public concern, despite the overall decrease in the rate of juvenile-perpetrated homicide since 1994. Due to several rulings by the U.S. Supreme Court (i.e., Miller v. Alabama, 2012), the likelihood that convicted juvenile homicide offenders (JHOs) will be released from prison has increased. Accordingly, it is important to examine these offenders’ long-term readjustment to society after their release. Using a mixed-method approach, the present study was designed to explore the factors that influence whether JHOs reoffend and their reoffending patterns, over a period of approximately 35 years. Another …

Ocean Eddies And Frontal Zones In The Gulf Of Mexico And Straits Of Florida, Yingjun Zhang

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Ocean eddies and fronts in the Gulf of Mexico (GoM) and the Straits of Florida (SoF) play important roles in ocean physics, biology, and ecology. These two ubiquitous physical features have been studied worldwide for decades, yet many questions remain unanswered or poorly studied for the GoM and SoF. This study aims to improve the understanding of ocean eddies and frontal zones in the GoM and SoF using satellite remote sensing, in situ observations and model outputs, as well as state-of-the-art algorithms, with the following objectives: 1) analyze the three-dimensional (3-D) statistical characteristics and thermohaline structure of mesoscale eddies in …

Color Defined: An Autoethnographic Exploration Of How Race, Trauma, Gun Violence, And Grief Connect For A Black Mother, Kokita Dirton Wilson

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Black mothers are disproportionately affected by fatal shootings and the need for making meaning and finding purpose remains overlooked as a vital component of building resilience in their grief journey. The purpose of this study was to (a) reflect on being a Black mother of a fatal shooting victim; (b) understand the grief and healing process that follows; (c) connect my experiences to those within the larger Black grief community, and (d) by example, help other grieving mothers navigate through their grief struggles. I used two research questions: 1) How can I learn about my grief process by using personal …

Zooplankton Biodiversity In The Northeast Gulf Of Mexico And On The West Florida Shelf From 2005 - 2014, Megan Ferguson

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Zooplankton abundance and biodiversity was measured in the northeast Gulf of Mexico (NEGoM) and on the West Florida Shelf. Bongo net samples were collected between May 2005 to September 2009 through the SEAMAP program, and between July 2010 to August 2014 through the C-IMAGE program. Calanoid copepods were the most abundant zooplankton group in most of the samples collected, but ostracods, larvaceans, and chaetognaths were also abundant. Shannon and Inverse Simpson indices were calculated for all zooplankton samples and generally showed similar trends, but only Shannon indices were used for statistical analyses. In the winter and spring there were significant …

Elucidating The Sources Supplying Aerosol Iron, Zinc, And Cadmium To The Surface Of The North Pacific Ocean With Stable Isotopes, Zach B. Bunnell

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Transition metals, such as iron (Fe), zinc (Zn) and cadmium (Cd), are found at just trace amounts within the global oceans yet are vital for many biological functions of phytoplankton. As a result, these metals influence the ocean’s efficacy for carbon sequestration. Atmospheric dust is the primary input of Fe to various surface waters and may also supply Zn and Cd to oligotrophic surface waters. Here, I present Fe, Zn, and Cd isotope data from the US North Pacific GEOTRACES Section GP15 (Alaska-Tahiti) from the low-dust season (Sept. – Nov. 2018). Using this data and aerosol enrichment factors, I show …

A Bathroom Break For Teachers: An Institutional Ethnotheatrical Inquiry, Jonathan M. Coker

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to examine the teacher bathroom dilemma, a term I coined to describe teachers not having adequate access to the bathroom during their workdays. While this issue is widely known by those in the profession, only a handful of articles have been written on this topic. The teacher bathroom dilemma is part of a litany of working conditions that have intensified due to the neoliberal turn in education, forcing teachers to perform precarious actions that endanger their physical and psychological health. This dissertation explored how the teacher bathroom dilemma impacted teachers’ work and personal lives. …

Educational Language Policy: An Examination Of Race And Language In Policy Discourse, Dionne L. Davis

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Linguistic diversity is an integral thread in the tapestry of America. As such researchers how linguistic differences across ethnoracial groups can be understood as resources rather than problems. The aim of this study was to examine ideologies concerning race/ethnicity and language in the discourse of educational language policies that guide multilingual approaches to education. The design of this study was critical discourse policy analysis, and the framework was a combination of Critical Language and Race Theory, also known as LangCrit (Crump, 2014), and Raciolinguistics (Alim, 2016; Flores and Rosa, 2015). The research questions were: (1) How are ideologies about the …

Regulation Of The Heat Shock Response Via Lysine Acetyltransferase Cbp-1 And In Neurodegenerative Disease In Caenorhabditis Elegans, Lindsey N. Barrett

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The decline of proteostasis is a hallmark of aging that is, in part, affected by the dysregulation of the heat shock response (HSR), a highly conserved cellular response to proteotoxic stress in the cell. The heat shock transcription factor HSF-1 is well-studied as a key regulator of proteostasis, but mechanisms that could be used to modulate HSF-1 function to enhance proteostasis during aging are largely unknown. In this study, we examined lysine acetyltransferase regulation of the HSR and HSF-1 in C. elegans. We performed an RNA interference screen of lysine acetyltransferases and examined mRNA expression of the heat-shock inducible gene …

Ultrafast Magneto-Optic Study Of Exchange Interactions In Magnetic Materials, Hengzhou Liu

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Magneto-optic Kerr Effect (MOKE) is a very important method to investigate the magnetization ofmaterials with the polarization and intensity of light reflected from a sample. Both dynamic and static MOKE are performed to study the magnetic properties of thin films and bulk crystals in this research. For the static MOKE measurement, a solid state laser was used to probe the samples to generate a hysteresis loop by changing the external field from -0.8 T to 0.8 T. The magnet can be placed at an angle between 0 to 20 degree with respect to the sample surface to probe different sample …

A Protein-Based Therapeutic Combination For The Treatment Of Hard-To-Heal Wounds, Graham L. Strauss

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Chronic wounds present many clinical challenges in relation to the successful treatment and closure of the damaged tissue. Most current treatment methods focused on one or two aspects to drive wound closure, while most chronic wounds are multifactorial environments with many of those dependencies relying on the termination of one another to effectively gain tissue construction, closure, and full skin thickness and composition. Natural wound healing processes allude to potential biologics that can impede the chronic breakdown of tissue, while restoring deposition of new tissue, and effectively leading to a healed wound. Proteases secreted by the body’s immune system lay …

Approach And Avoidance Food Craving: A Dual Cue Reactivity Investigation, Christina Lee Verzijl

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Recent research suggests that food craving is a motivational process underlying the full spectrum of disordered eating behaviors. The ambivalence model of craving, originally applied to substance use craving, provides a framework through which the push-pull motivational process of food craving and its relation to the range of disordered eating behaviors can be understood. In this perspective, food craving is a multi-dimensional motivational process that involves an individual’s competing desires to both consume (i.e., approach) and not consume (i.e., avoid) certain food. Building on previous literature, the current study tested whether behavioral measures of approach and avoidance food craving (i.e., …

First-Generation Female Doctoral Students’ Perceptions Of The Doctoral Experience, Nancy Carol Carr

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of my study was to understand the perceptions of first-generation female doctoral students (FGFDS) and what factors may impact first-generation female doctoral students’ completion of their doctoral program. As the researcher, I collected data through: (a) interviews, (b) participant generated photographs, (c) the group meeting, and (d) the researcher’s personal reflexive journal. Two research questions guided this exploratory qualitative study: In what ways do first-generation female doctoral students in the College of Education perceive their experiences impact their progress during their doctoral program at a large research university in Central Florida?; and what factors do first-generation female doctoral …

Modified Biosand Filtration Using Aluminum Hydroxide Filter Media To Enhance Fluoride Removal, Joshelyn Guimaray

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

There are over 20 countries whose citizens consume groundwater containing high levels of fluoride, including Nigeria, Mexico, India, China, and Ghana, which all have major health crises when it comes to the safety of their drinking water. Minerals like fluorite contain fluoride which is often found in groundwater aquifers. The minerals release fluoride into the groundwater. Per the World Health Organization (WHO) standard, the maximum contaminant limit for fluoride consumption should be less than 1.5 mg/L. Chronic exposure of elevated levels of fluoride can cause people to suffer debilitating health effects, such as dental and skeletal fluorosis. Dental fluorosis causes …

Ethnographic Insight On The Construct Of Blackness: Heritage, ‘Home,’ Community, And Reality In Carver City-Lincoln Gardens, Tampa, Florida, 1928-2021, Lisa Katina Armstrong

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study is a community-engaged investigation of the experiences and impacts of Black people living in the segregated space called “Carver City-Lincoln Gardens.” This study aims to advance scholarly and mainstream conversations about one racialized community; it is a significant space because the Lincoln Gardens Area was explicitly designated by the Department of Defense as a residential space for Black veterans after World War II to purchase homes. By exploring this housing arrangement through an anthropological lens, the findings indicate that a mixed-method, collaborative ethnography reveals nuances that might be glossed over when communities are racialized. This study also seeks …

Population Genomics Of The Giant Caribbean Sea Anemone Condylactis Gigantea (Anthozoa: Actiniidae) In Florida And Across The Caribbean, Nancy E. Sheridan

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The giant Caribbean sea anemone Condylactis gigantea is a long-lived, conspicuous, and phenotypically diverse species native to the western Atlantic Ocean (from Bermuda to southeast Brazil), Caribbean Sea, and southeastern Gulf of Mexico. This sea anemone is an important benthic community member that provides habitat to numerous species, including cleaner shrimp. This relationship makes these animals desirable to aquarists for both enjoyment and the service provided by the shrimp for the overall health of an aquarium, and which is why they are sought.

The extraction of about 3.3 million C. gigantea individuals in Florida over a 23-year period for the …

Assessing The Human-Health Risk Of Exposure To Pathogens From Beach Sands, Javier Federico Gallard-Góngora

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Fecal contamination at recreational beaches impacts the health of beachgoers, through the introduction of disease-causing microorganisms, and the well-being of communities dependent on income from recreational beach activities. Beach ecosystems are also impacted by sewage through the introduction of nutrients that can cause abnormal increases in autochthonous microorganisms which can impact the population of larger organisms in the ecosystem. Fecal contamination is introduced into sand via untreated sewage, direct deposition of human feces into sand, runoff, and deposition of animal feces into sand. The introduction of fecal contamination into sand exposes individuals to pathogens (disease causing microorganisms) which can result …

An Integrated Approach For Dynamic Process Modeling And Optimization Of Wastewater Treatment Facilities, Komal Rathore

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The subareas of process systems engineering including process modeling, simulation, and optimization are becoming progressively substantial for understanding processes, making decisions, improving efficiency, and complying with stricter environmental and safety legislation. Additionally, the availability of user-friendly flowsheet simulators and computational resources with the current trend of data collection and analysis has allowed for a more accurate representation of complex processes such as wastewater treatment systems. Despite all the progress in the areas of process modeling and simulation, the first-principle mechanistic models for wastewater treatment processes are at best employed during the design stage, and therefore, not used optimally for day-to-day …

Hope 4 Boys: The Impact Of A Youth Diversion Program, Justine C. Connolly

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The Florida Department of Juvenile Justice (DJJ) is developing programs targeting first-time nonviolent offenders who might benefit from community-based treatment and positive youth development to prevent these individuals from becoming adult criminals. Thus, the DJJ seeks new and innovative ways to prevent juvenile delinquency and reduce recidivism among first-time nonviolent offenders. The present study aimed to evaluate the Hope 4 Boys program, a juvenile diversion program that addresses the academic and social-emotional needs of juvenile delinquents. The study examined how participation in the program is associated with changes in participants’ levels of hope for the future, life satisfaction, and resiliency …